Sanctuary cities are another terrible immigration policy that has brought preventable crime and death to America, yet the practice continues because powerful elites want cheap labor and open borders. As a result, the notion of America being a “nation of laws” has suffered enormously, along with the unnecessary carnage.

After the Steinle murder, San Francisco doubled down on its sanctuary policy to protect illegal alien criminals rather than stand for public safety.

For a recent update about the issue, see the July 29 memo from America’s Senator Jeff Sessions: DOJ Inspector General Finds Sanctuary Jurisdiction Policies Violate Federal Law.

Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies appeared on Sunday with Tucker Carlson to review the federal government’s complicity in aiding illegal alien criminals.

TUCKER CARLSON: The US Department of Justice has coughed up about $342 million in taxpayer money, your money, to just 10 so-called sanctuary cities. These places have policies barring jails and the police from cooperating with the US immigration and customs agents. New data show that money is 63 percent of the funds available to all American cities, so should taxpayers be on the hook for coddling illegal criminal aliens? Jessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies for the Center of Immigration Studies. Good to see you this morning. So how exactly this is work and why is the Justice Department paying cities that have policies that violate federal law?

JESSICA VAUGHAN: Well, it’s outrageous. The Department of Justice has a number of grant programs for federal law enforcement agencies, including one that reimburses them for detaining criminal aliens and there’s allowing even the sanctuary jurisdictions that are obstructing immigration enforcement in violation of federal law to get these grants regardless of their policy. And this is outrageous, not only because it means taxpayers are subsidizing the obstruction of enforcement and they’re not complying with federal law, but the result is that criminal aliens who should be deported instead get released back into the communities and are there to keep threatening people so it’s a public safety problem as well.

CARLSON: That’s for sure. The federal government has traditionally withheld funds to the states that don’t follow its guidelines for laws, like when they wanted to raise the drinking age to 21, they said we’re not giving you any more highway funds until you do it. This is just the opposite: the federal government, the Obama people, are rewarding cities for breaking federal law. What does it say about their regard for the law when the Justice Department encourages people to break the law?

VAUGHAN: Well they should not be allowing these sanctuary jurisdictions to get funding. They’re undermining ICE, their own department of homeland security, in allowing this, but you know hypocritically they turn around and sue places like Arizona that want to help enforce federal law and yet they’re allowing these scofflaw sanctuary jurisdictions to keep doing it and not only that, collect a check from the federal government. And this is important that now, because of pressure from Congress, because of pressure from Congressman John Culberson who controls the Department of Justice’s budget, they’re now having to admit that these sanctuaries are violating federal law and it sets the stage for other action against these sanctuaries.

CARLSON: So would any of us obey any law when the Obama administration’s own Justice Department is encouraging people to ignore the law?

VAUGHAN: Well it can’t go on. I mean it’s time for action to be taken against the sanctuaries. The ideal thing would be for them to reconsider their policies. You’d think it would be enough that people are literally getting killed as a result of these policies, but now they may lose access to federal funding. That could be an incentive, and if not, ultimately someone is going to have to take legal action against these jurisdictions, but this is a great step in the right direction to clarify that they are illegal.

CARLSON: To clarify: these are rich cities too. These are places like San Francisco, so this is yet another transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy who are politically favored by the Obama administration.

VAUGHAN: That’s right and these 10 were the worst that DOJ identified, but there are more than 300 of them at last count all over the country, but these big ones are really sucking up all this money that should go to places that are doing the right thing, but also it’s just outrageous that so much money is going to subsidize this this illegal activity.

CARLSON: You get the feeling sometimes things really are falling apart. Thanks a lot.