There’s no sanctuary from the past.
Big Apple mayoral hopeful Andrew Cuomo shouldn’t have a role in politics if he still supports sanctuary city and immigrant-welcoming policies that he enacted as governor, President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday.
Cuomo signed the state’s Green Light Law in 2019 and also issued 2017 executive order during Trump’s first term that prohibited state law enforcement from providing certain immigration information to the feds.
“If he supports sanctuary laws, no, I don’t think so,” Homan said when asked by The Post about Cuomo’s bid at a political comeback.
The border chief’s gruff appraisal came as he joined New York Republicans’ push to repeal the Green Light Law that allows undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses and limits such data sharing with the feds.
The GOP lawmakers rallied with Homan in the Albany state Capitol building to highlight their bids to slam the brakes on the license law and pass New York’s Laken Riley Act, a bill aiming to halt sanctuary policies.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) had voted against the Green Light Law when she was a state lawmaker in 2019.
“New Yorkers should remember that so many policies we dislike — sanctuary state and green light laws, free college for illegal immigrants while citizens get saddled with debt, the botched bail law releasing repeat offenders and the congestion tax cash grab were brought to us by Andrew Cuomo,” she said.
State Sen. George Borrello, a Republican who was the Chautauqua County executive when the Green Light law was approved by Cuomo, said opponents’ concerns about the law restricting locals from working with the feds remain.
He noted that Hochul opposed the law when she was Erie County clerk and a congresswoman, but changed her tune when she ran for governor.
“Andrew Cuomo is a hypocrite,” Borrello said. “He was the champion of the progressive, pro-criminal policies, and now he claims he’s not.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi shot back that immigrants convicted of crimes remain subject to ICE enforcement.
He also defended the Green Light Law.
“Twenty states – Democratic and Republican – have similar laws on the books — but despite this fact, in 2020 the first Trump administration targeted New York, unilaterally removing us from the Trusted Traveler Program,” he said.
“At the time, we worked together to narrowly tweak the law to address their stated concerns and the feds accepted them — after which the U.S. attorney at the time acknowledged the political nature of the Trump administration’s targeting of New York, publicly apologizing for a series of false and misleading statements made by federal officials that ignored the other states with the same laws.”
