Baltimore mayor says he won't be influenced by Trump official's threat to cut federal funds over immigration cooperation

BALTIMORE — Mayor Brandon Scott says he won’t allow Baltimore’s law enforcement priorities to be influenced by President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers’ threats to cut federal funds to states or cities not cooperating with a mass deportation plan.

Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “Border Czar,” said on Fox News Sunday that funds could be slashed to states whose police officers or other officials refuse requests to assist federal authorities in what Trump aides say will be the largest deportation program in American history.

In a Baltimore Sun interview, Scott said Wednesday of Baltimore police: “The number one thing in Baltimore they should be focused on is continuing to drive down violence, homicides and shootings and carjackings in our city.”

Scott’s response echoed that of other jurisdictions led by Democrats — such as Anne Arundel and Montgomery counties — that have said assigning local police to deportation efforts would take them away from their central mission of serving county residents.

“We would hope that this administration, who says they want to come down and make sure that violence is going down in cities, doesn’t come disrupt the apple cart when violence is going down in the city to a level it has never had before,” Scott said. Baltimore has been seeing a decline in shootings on the heels of a year when it saw a double-digit reduction in homicides and fell under 300 killings in one year for the first time since before 2015.

Trump, a Republican who will take office Jan. 20, campaigned on a pledge to significantly boost deportations of undocumented migrants.

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump transition spokeswoman who will be White House press secretary, said last week that Trump will “marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history.”

The president-elect indicated in a Truth Social post that he was prepared to declare a national border emergency and use the military in the operation.

If Trump follows through with his program as promised, Baltimore and other local jurisdictions will be left with the politically charged decision of whether to assist federal agents if asked.

Some other mayors, such as Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, have also been defiant, saying his city wouldn’t work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on a mass deportation plan.

A number of factors may influence cities’ responses to the threat of losing federal funds. Those considerations could include whether cities believe they could absorb lost federal dollars that could lead to higher local costs.

“I think it would really depend on the city,” said Colleen Putzell-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan think tank. “I’m sure that there are some places where constituents would be very supportive of taking on those costs, whereas in other places it might be more mixed.”

It’s uncertain which federal funds could be targeted.

In Baltimore, Scott said the city was prepared to “pivot” if federal funds were cut to the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, a partnership of the police department and the state’s attorney’s office focused on people identified as being at particularly high risk for gun violence.

The program “was built in the way that it wasn’t just totally reliant on federal funding or state funding or city funding. We have philanthropic partners,” the mayor said, promising “the work will continue.”

Trump has a stormy history with Baltimore.

During his first term in 2019, Trump mocked U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, his hometown of Baltimore and his congressional district, which Trump called “rat and rodent infested.” Cummings died in October of that year.

While blasting Trump’s remarks, Scott, who was then the City Council president, said he would welcome aid from the White House to address Baltimore’s problems, such as crumbling infrastructure and substandard public housing.

“Stop tweeting,” he advised Trump. “Let’s start working.”