Since Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General in February, following his nomination by President Donald Trump, he has pushed forward much of the nationalist agenda promised during the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Spearheaded efforts to keep potential terrorists out of the U.S. by defending Trump’s executive order to temporarily prevent individuals from six Muslim-majority countries where terrorists are operating and safe havens for terrorists are in place.
- Fought legal battle against so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to enforce federal immigration laws, including handling lawsuits seeking to derail efforts by the Trump administration to withhold certain federal grants from said cities.
• On the border, Sessions revised prosecution guidelines to ensure illegal alien cases are properly handled according to federal immigration law, shifted immigration judges to the border, and acted to hire more judges to handle backlog of cases. Also DOJ proposed budget asks for $1.8 million to “meet litigation, acquisition, and appraisal demands during the construction along the border between Mexico and the United States.”
- Draining the swamp: cleared out Obama holdovers in leadership positions in relevant DOJ offices as part of effort to crackdown on illegal immigration in the United States.
- Put an end to DOJ “slush fund” that funneled settlement money from companies sued by the DOJ — for example, for civil rights complaints to left-wing groups like the recently renamed National Council of La Raza — now a thing of the past.
• Also curtailed wherever possible the practice of interfering with local law enforcement operations by removing the restrictive consent decrees and federal monitoring promoted/practiced by the Obama administration.
• Produced the Sessions Memo that returned to the policy crystallized in the 2003 Ashcroft Memo, named after President George W. Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft, of charging defendants in all cases with the most serious offense prosecutors feel will succeed at trial and to allow U.S. Attorneys and other high-level prosecutors to pursue lesser charges in exceptional cases where they explain their decision in writing.