Mayors across the country on ICE protests, new ICE detention centers and more

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Margaret Brennan interviewed a bipartisan panel of mayors from across the country on Face the Nation Sunday to talk about the ongoing ICE protests.

Brennan asked Mesa, Arizona Mayor Mark Freeman (R) why having a policy of handing people over to federal authorities if they have an immigration infraction while local authorities pick them up for something else works when it doesn't work in place like Minneapolis, to which Mayor Freeman said:

"That's a great question, but I think there's some misinterpretation of it because in Mesa, we have an agreement with ICE. But however, it's only on infractions that may be a civil infraction, and so we don't have a jail in Mesa, Arizona. So we go to a holding facility, and we've been working with ICE...since 2009 with an agreement that we found very successful with. But more importantly, what we're doing in Mesa, I've elevated it to the next level. We have Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, that we have with our Hispanic-Latino community. We have El Grito, who's the liberation of Spain from Mexico. So we have these great experiences in Mesa, Arizona, our downtown area in cooperation with our Latino-Hispanic area. And I meet with our pastors as well to make sure that everything is going well on their end."

When asked if there's no pressure to change his current policies, Freeman said, "I mean, there's pressures all the time from other organizations, but we stand solid in our commitment to provide safety to our neighborhoods and to our Latino-Hispanic communities, and we work with them every week, every month."

Brennan then asked Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt (R) how he's counseling other mayors, and Mayor Holt said:

"I don't know a few observations in reaction to that. I mean, first off, it's really important to point out that we have enforced immigration laws in this country for over a century. ICE has been around for two decades. There was even a previous Trump administration that...and in none of those times did you see this level of chaos in our cities. I understand in the previous Trump administration, there was controversy about things at the border. But I'm talking about all the, you know, 1,000 miles from the border area...in places like Minneapolis. So...we can look back to previous eras of normality and appreciate that there are ways to competently enforce immigration laws in this country. And I think that's what we're kind of asking for is that sort of pivot back to a new strategy that may be an old strategy, and I think we all accept that this administration prioritizes a higher level of enforcement. But what we're seeing in the conflicts in the streets of Minneapolis is just obviously unacceptable, and we're still sort of reeling from what happened last Saturday. And you know, we're generally encouraged that the administration seems to be exploring that pivot, you know. And of course, we understand it takes time to sort of get the right personnel in place and make the policies so, I mean, we're giving them that space. But what was happening in Minneapolis that kind of culminated in the second death of a protester last Saturday is obviously something that we would all fear to happen in our cities. And we fear that that kind of chaos was starting to potentially creep around the country. I think the other thing I want to observe, though, is that mayors are certainly caught in a little bit of an impossible situation, because, you know, we take these roles with our chief obligation being the protection of our residents, and we're even given a police department, people with guns to aid us in that pursuit. But there is a thing called the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, and when the federal government and federal law enforcement comes into your city, we are fully subservient to that in the eyes of the law, and we also believe in the rule of law. So, we get caught kind of in the middle of these tensions, and we need a federal government who will use discretion and restraint with that power, and that has mostly worked for the last 250 years. So, I think we just need to remind everybody that this is possible. And I think you see mayors maybe messaging some of that to our residents, some of it to Congress, some of it to administration, just trying to find a happy medium for everybody where we can coexist with all of these inherent tensions that, of course, have always existed and we have largely been able to manage."

Speaking to Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas (D), Brennan said the federal government is looking to turn industrial warehouses into large-scale detention centers for up to 10,000, causing friction in Kansas City, with Mayor Lucas passing a city ordinance to combat it.

This led her to ask the mayor if he can actually stop the federal government from turning warehouses into detention centers, and Lucas said:

"I think there's a substantial question to it. The people of Kansas City have asked us to make sure, though, that we stand up for...in this situation, simple zoning, that we make sure that we share what is the viewpoint of the people of Kansas City. There absolutely is a Supremacy Clause. There's also a 10th Amendment. And so in our view, that is...which is reserved to the States, which includes local zoning, local police powers, particularly where private contractors are in the transaction with the city, we have the opportunity to engage. There's been a long fight near us in Leavenworth, Kansas, you know it for prison and a military base, where they've also managed to reject the placement of a federal facility working through a private enterprise. So we wanted to make clear not only that people largely didn't want a 10,000 person detention facility near them, but also that they have to go through things like zoning a special use permit. It sounds in some way boring. It is core to what government is. But I think taking us from perhaps the political issue, there's the simple one, which is in all of our communities, we want to make sure people are treated humanely. Converting a gigantic distribution facility next to railroad tracks and all of that into a warehouse for 10,000 people for which it was never designed is not right, and it is fundamentally something that is inhumane and inhospitable, at least to the senses that we have in Kansas City, and I would submit to you most American cities. So whether it is converting giant distribution facilities into mass detention warehouses, whether it's Alligator Alcatraz in Florida or anything under the sun. I think you are seeing communities say, we want to make sure that if there will be detention, if there will be enforcement, it is consistent with constitutional principles longterm."

Later in the interview, Brennan brought up a Pew Research Center data saying nearly 7% of Florida is undocumented, and says the police in Miami to cooperate with ICE.

However, Brennan said Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins (D), during her campaign, was very critical of that cooperation, leading her to ask Mayor Higgins if she can change the policy without Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) being on board, and the mayor said:

"The governor issued a requirement that local municipalities cooperate with ICE, and many municipalities, including the city of Miami, before I became mayor, signed that agreement. It is very difficult to unwind. It would take a vote of our city commission to do so. So obviously, as mayor, I intend to comply with the law, and so what we have done in our 1,500 person police department is we have trained three individuals, should ICE call that are able to answer that call and work with them. Obviously, we're going to comply with the law, but we are not going to help beyond that, because in my community in South Florida, we are the most affected. ICE and its tactics have been in my community for over a year. They have been causing great fear and terror in our residents. I cannot go anywhere without meeting someone, my brother, my uncle, my sister, Alligator Alcatraz, no sabemos donde esta, we don't know where they have been taken, and that has been going on for months. It is inhumane. It is cruel. I'm a Catholic. It's- I can barely grapple with the lack of humanity around all this. And then what we have very differently from any other community, in Miami-Dade County, which we are part of, approximately 15% of our population has TPS. So you're talking...about between 250 and 300,000 individuals that would- that have slowly but surely, where they've lost status, but become overnight illegals in the eyes of the federal government. And this enforcement in our Nicaraguan community, our Honduran community, our Venezuelan community, has driven many people into hiding. Children are not going to school, and obviously, ICE is deporting them. Tuesday night, we face a very, very dire situation. Our Haitian community loses its access to TPS at midnight. 20% of TPS recipients with Haitian heritage work in health care. So on Wednesday, we are talking about nursing homes, home health care aides, hospitals, nurses, physician aides, all of them are going to be out of a job when they wake up on Wednesday...Haiti is not safe. Venezuela is not safe. TPS should be extended immediately for Venezuelans. It was erased with the stroke of a pen. It can be put in place with the stroke of a pen, and TPS for Haitian immigrants should absolutely positively be extended. Our economy is at stake and our humanity is at stake."

To watch Brennan's full interview with the mayors, click here.