Sen. Tuberville warns Alabama Mayor Stewart over ICE protection plans
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Irondale Mayor James Stewart, Jr. cited Martin Luther King Jr. as justification for protecting illegal immigrants and pledged funds to train activists to track down ICE agents. However, his actions could provoke a federal backlash, as Alabama’s senior senator has warned the mayor that he “won’t like me very much” if he follows through.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. — who is also running this year to succeed term-limited Gov. Kay Ivey — warned Stewart that the Democrat wouldn’t have as much luck circumventing the federal government.
“When I’m governor, Alabama will have a zero-tolerance policy for rogue mayors who try to circumvent federal law,” Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach, told Fox News Digital.
“Like it or not, federal law says illegal immigrants should be deported. If mayors don’t like that, they should run to Congress.”
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Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., left, speaks while President Donald Trump, right, listens. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital contacted Stewart’s office after he said in its February mayoral newsletter that “watching ICE operations tear apart families in Irondale highlights the urgent need to address immigration policies affecting our community, which brings me back to King’s final speech, the one where he said he had seen the Promised Land but might not get there.”
“I understand that now. This may be my last term. But I still have to do God’s will. Every day. When Dr. King said, ‘I just want to do God’s will’ the night before they killed him, it makes me cry. Because I know what that means now,” Stewart said.
Stewart said ICE’s operations “follow the same pattern” described by King in his letter from the Birmingham jail near Irondale.
Tuberville further disputed reports from Alabama news outlet 1819 News — so named in reference to the state’s founding year — that Irondale had signed a contract with the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ) to assist with programs such as an “alert system to track [ICE] agents at the request of the city mayor.
In this regard, Stewart said in his newsletter that his work inspired by King is not finished while “the families who built this community are hunted down.”
Days after Stewart’s newsletter was published, Jose Ba-Ruiz, a knife-wielding illegal Mexican immigrant, was arrested and charged Monday by the Justice Department for assaulting an ICE agent in the Birmingham area.
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Interstate 20 enters Alabama from Georgia, as drivers gain an hour to switch to Central Time, in Abernathy, Alabama. (Charles Creitz/Fox News Digital)
In comments on Fox News Digital, Ivey supported Tuberville, saying Montgomery would still work with DHS:
“Unlike Minnesota, in Alabama we enforce the law,” Ivey said.
“We are proud to work with ICE to do just that: enforce the laws and protect our citizens from criminals and lawbreakers.”
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Although Stewart did not respond to Fox News Digital at the time of publication, he told the Fox affiliate in Birmingham that Irondale was not a sanctuary city and would not hide criminals from the law, then claimed that he would not actually interfere with ICE operations.
“A lot of things we see today are things that were happening 300 to 400 years ago,” he told the outlet. “We want to be a law-abiding city, but we also know our role.”
