Georgia cities, counties included in feds’ list targeting ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’

“To be clear, our governing authority has not designated Douglas County, Georgia, as a ‘sanctuary jurisdiction.’ It is unclear how and why our agency is included on this list,” county spokesperson Yvette Jones told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, adding that county officials have not received any correspondence from DHS on the matter.

DHS did not provide specifics on why the Georgia localities were included.

The departments has put more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” across the country on notice as it attempts to increase pressure on communities it believes are standing in the way of the president’s mass deportations agenda.

“These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release Thursday.

The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department.

Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated.

The Associated Press contributed to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article.