Here's some major-league virtue-signaling from Atlanta's Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

The mayor signed an executive order that will prevent the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from detaining illegal alien criminals in Atlanta's city jail.  She also requested that ICE remove all detainees currently held.

Her explanation is classic.

Fox News:

"As we work to achieve our vision of an Atlanta that is welcoming and inclusive, with equal opportunity for all, it is untenable for our City to be complicit in the inhumane immigration policies that have led to the separation of hundreds of families at the United States southern border," Bottoms said in a statement.

Sorry to inform you, Madam Mayor, but Atlanta – the last time I looked – is still part of the United States of America.  That makes you "complicit" in anything and everything the federal government does.

The move comes months after Bottoms signed a separate order that blocked the city jail from accepting any new ICE detainees amid enforcement of the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy, which resulted in migrant families being separated at the border.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that there were 205 ICE detainees in the jail in June, and that number decreased to just five as of Wednesday.

A spokesperson for ICE confirmed to the newspaper that all of the agency's detainees at the Atlanta City Detention Center would be transferred by the end of Thursday.

"I do not make this decision lightly, or without concern as to the impact on these individuals," Bottoms' statement read.  "But until there is comprehensive immigration reform, this is the only way Atlanta can truly fulfill its legacy of compassion and tolerance.  Civil offenses do not warrant criminal consequences – and no one should be jailed solely because they seek the American Dream."

Atlanta's "legacy" is not one of "compassion and tolerance."  It is one of racism, brutality, oppression, and the mistreatment of black Americans.  There has been a concerted effort to whitewash this "legacy," but not amount of revisionist rhetoric will alter the shameful history of the city.

Most of these illegal aliens are detained because they committed criminal acts.  Most of these crimes are not "civil offenses."  Crossing the border illegally might be, but most are not being specifically detained for that crime.  So when she makes the straw man argument that "no one should be jailed solely because they seek the American Dream," she gets it wrong on two counts: those criminal illegals sure have a strange idea of how to pursue the "American Dream" by preying on Atlanta's citizens and they are not "solely" being jailed for that pursuit.  And what about all of those individuals around the world who also want to "pursue" the American dream but are doing it by the numbers, waiting patiently to enter the country legally?  I guess the mayor's sense of "social justice" and "fairness" excludes those who obey the law.

Yes, but it sure makes Bottoms out to be one compassionate, virtuous human being, doesn't it?