Jeff Sessions wants to save “dangerous” Portland from itself

Thanks to the TV show “Portlandia,” Oregon’s largest city has gained a reputation as a hipster paradise where “the tattoo ink never runs dry” and “all the hot girls wear glasses.”

But to hear Attorney General Jeff Sessions tell it, Portland is a crime-infested hellhole where “pedophiles, murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and arsonists” are roaming the streets because local authorities refuse to obey federal immigration law.

Sessions was in Portland on Tuesday, where he spoke to employees at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. Most of his remarks focused on sanctuary cities — places like Portland, where police refuse to indefinitely hold undocumented immigrants in jail at the request of federal immigration agents. In his remarks, Sessions called these cities “a trafficker, smuggler, or gang member’s best friend.”

In reality, Portland is among the safest cities in America. Sessions cited a few statistics and noted an uptick in murders in recent years, but the crime trends don’t exactly reflect his dark vision of the city. Murders are up slightly so far this year — but that only translates to 14 killings in a city with nearly 640,000 people. Two of those deaths were part of a brutal hate crime committed by a white supremacist, though Sessions didn’t mention that during his speech — or note that Oregon now leads the nation in hate crimes per capita.

Instead, Sessions railed against “so-called sanctuary policies,” which he said “undermine the moral authority of law and undermine the safety of the jurisdictions that adopt them.”

Later in the afternoon, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese fired back, saying his deputies need all residents to feel comfortable approaching local law enforcement without the fear of deportation. “Local law enforcement should be focused on building trust within the community,” Reese said, “not doing the job of federal immigration enforcement.”

In June, Portland and Seattle sued Trump over an executive order attempting to deny them federal funds over their sanctuary policies. Last week, a federal judge in a separate case blocked Trump from punishing sanctuary cities. Now unable to coerce cities into deputizing their cops as de facto ICE agents, Sessions is left pleading for compliance and trying to strike fear into the hearts of locals.

He accused sanctuary policies of sheltering “lethal gangs like the Latin Kings and MS-13” and cited a statistic indicating Portland cops were responding to more gang-related incidents in recent years. But again, the situation on the ground contradicts his rhetoric — the Portland Police Bureau is currently phasing out its gang database, and after Oct. 15, police in the city will no longer label individuals as gang members.

“It was creating trust issues with the community and the police,” Portland Police Captain Mike Krantz explained to VICE News. Recent lawsuits allege federal immigration agents have been using gang databases to target undocumented immigrants for deportation, but Krantz said that was never a problem in Portland. “We have never had any questions from ICE about our gangs, but it may be because most of our gangs are black gangs; we don’t have a giant Hispanic gang population.”

In fact, researchers have found no evidence to support the claim that sanctuary cities have higher crime rates. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who declined to attend the event with Sessions and instead sent him a letter detailing his opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, argued that Portland is actually safer because of its sanctuary status.

“In Portland we do not merely tolerate diversity; we celebrate it,” Wheeler said. “Our local laws support these values, and we are better for it.

Wheeler pointed out that a federal judge ruled in 2014 that Clackamas County, which borders Portland, had violated a woman’s constitutional rights by holding her indefinitely at the request of immigration officials. And Oregon state law has banned local police from enforcing federal immigration laws since 1987. Sessions didn’t acknowledge either of these points.

“These policies do far greater damage than many understand,” he said. “At its root, they are a rejection of our immigration laws and a declaration of open borders.”

The “Portlandia” theme song describes the city as “an alternate universe” — on that, it seems the creators and Sessions can agree.