Several Italian mayors have clashed over the past few days with Interior Minister Matteo Salvini over his security decree, which cracks down on immigrants and asylum seekers, saying they will disobey provisions they argue will create illegality and harm basic human rights.

Under the new law, which went into effect in December 2018, city authorities are no longer allowed to provide asylum seekers with identity cards, national health service cards, and other local services.

As well, the security decree makes it harder for people to qualify for temporary humanitarian protection and dismantles the System of Protection for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (SPRAR), which spread asylum seekers in small centers across Italy, where they received education and other services that helped them integrate into Italian society.

The open conflict began this Thursday, when Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando told a televised press conference that choosing not to enforce "a law that violates human rights" is an act of responsibility.

"Let's stop calling those who respect human rights subversives," Orlando said, adding he would appeal to the Constitutional Court.

Orlando was backed up by other mayors including Luigi De Magistris in Naples, Dario Nardella in Florence, Federico Pizzarotti in Parma, and Giuseppe Falcomata in Reggio Calabria, as well as Cerveteri Mayor Alessio Pascucci and Pescara Mayor Marco Alessandrini.

On Friday, Orlando held a sit-in to protest against the security decree, which he called on Twitter "inhumane and uncivilized."

Salvini, leader of the rightwing anti-immigrant League party, retorted in televised comments on Friday that "the party is over", that mayors who refuse to apply the new regulations are "traitors" and should "step down", and threatened them with prosecution.

Critics of Salvini's decree argue that it will result in thousands of people being ejected from the system and drifting through Italy's towns and cities in a state of illegality, with no ID and no access to public services -- which will make them harder to track by authorities while pushing them into the arms of organized crime.

Bari Mayor Antonio Decaro, who also serves as president of the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI), urged Salvini to meet with Italy's mayors to discuss the problematic aspects of his decree.

"The new norms objectively put us mayors in a difficult position," Decaro said in a statement. "If we cannot guarantee basic rights...to the migrants in our cities, nor do we have the power to repatriate them, how are we mayors supposed to behave?"

As far Salvini's threats against disobedient mayors, Decaro pointed out that before becoming a government minister, Salvini himself urged Italy's mayors to disobey a new law -- the one on civil unions, which allows same-sex couples to legalize their partnership.

The clash between the interior minister and the mayors also caused tensions within the ruling coalition government, which is made up of Salvini's rightwing League party and the populist Five Star Movement.

While Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio, who serves as deputy prime minister, urged members of the majority to stick together and back the decree, members of his party expressed dissent over Salvini's hardline anti-immigrant stance, which includes refusing port access to two German NGO vessels (Sea Watch and Sea Eye)with 49 rescued men, women, and children on board.

The migrants were rescued in the waters off Libya before Christmas, and the two NGO vessels have been sailing in the Mediterranean ever since, with no country willing to let them dock.

The odyssey of the two NGO vessels caused an outcry among some lawmakers, including within the ruling majority.

On Friday, Five Star Senator Elena Fattori wrote on social media that "shutting down ports to prevent immigration is like shutting down hospitals to prevent disease -- useless, cruel, and inhumane".

Late on Friday, Di Maio said that Italy was willing to take in the women and children, according to Italian news agency ANSA.

"Fear and desperation on the Sea Watch 3," Sea Watch organizers wrote on Twitter Saturday. "The families: don't divide us. On board, testimonies of hidden mass deaths: 60 migrants drowned in October amid silence from authorities".

Later on Saturday, House Speaker Roberto Fico of the Five Star Movement wrote in a post on Facebook in reference to the rescued migrants on board the two humanitarian vessels that "we cannot allow human beings who are fleeing from pain, death and suffering to be left in unacceptable conditions...If we act in solidarity all together we become stronger, and responsibilities are no longer a burden on a community, if they are shared".

Meanwhile European Union officials are discussing which countries should take in the migrants. Accordng to Avvenire newspaper, while the mothers and their children would end up in Italy, the men would be spread out between Germany, France, Holland, and Portugal.