Sanctuary

“No legal definition of sanctuary cities exists, and many mayors dislike the label, saying it unfairly describes policies that merely stop local law enforcement from acting as immigration deputies… Generally, the term refers to jurisdictions that have placed limits on when local law enforcement agencies comply with federal requests to hold undocumented immigrants for detention and turn them over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“Those requests greatly increased after the Obama administration extended nationwide an electronic monitoring system by which the fingerprints of every person booked by local or state police are sent to the Department of Homeland Security for checking against immigration databases.

“More than 500 counties and cities have some kind of policy limiting cooperation with the immigration authorities, according to an estimate from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy and legal assistance group in San Francisco and Washington.” New York Times, November 27^th. The above map, created by the conservative watchdog Center for Immigration Studies, suggests which government venues the GOP believes have achieved sanctuary status.

The GOP has campaigned for years in favor state and local rights, to get the feds out of local prerogatives. It will be interesting to see how a new firmly ensconced GOP, now in charge of every aspect of the federal government, will seek to vitiate those states’ rights that contradict their view of what the good old American values should be. And step all over those local prerogatives. A further question arises: is immigration the only issue where a “sanctuary” from federal laws matters?

Is a state that has made marijuana legal – either completely or for medical purposes – a federal scoff-law sanctuary from federal laws that still make all things marijuana criminal? Our new Attorney General nominee, Jeff Sessions, is deeply against loosening our marijuana laws and could easily reinstate a federal priority, abrogated under the Obama Administration that told U.S. Attorneys to go slow on federal marijuana prosecutions in states where laws were recently changed to permit or tolerate that substance, to prosecute “federal offenders” even in marijuana tolerant states. That the criminal justice system is clogged with expensive-to-house drug offenders could fall on deaf ears in the new administration.

But there real battle is clearly going to be fought over President-Elect Donald Trump’s pledge to begin deportations of any undocumented alien with any sort of criminal record, before going beyond that cohort to widen the deportation scheme. The rough estimate of such “criminal record” undocumented residents is around three million such offenders. Immigration and border control is the exclusive prerogative of the federal government, but then so many policies that Republicans oppose fall within that exclusive federal mandate, and they are pushing hard to move those choices back to the states.

As noted above, Homeland Security already has fingerprints of people in any criminal justice matter, so the states have already cooperated with the feds as far as that goes. But the cost of deploying the massive numbers of new federal agents to pursue this category of undocumented residents become almost prohibitive absent the rather full cooperation of local law enforcement. And that cooperation issue is the battleground between feds and locals.

But does being a sanctuary state of city require local authorities to create actual venues – schools, universities, churches, etc. – where the undocumented can frequent knowing that their immigration status will not be challenged? Where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents are just not welcome? Or can it remove states/cities from supplying officers to aid federal immigration officials in their quest to detain and deport undocumented residents but otherwise not inferring in the deportation process? How about simply having states/cities refuse to cooperate with the feds without otherwise blocking their efforts? And what can the feds do to such states/cities to force the issue… legally? Where is that line?

While there are other states with significant populations of undocumented workers, there are an estimated 2.3 undocumented aliens in California with criminal records with an economy that is deeply dependent on such residents – not to mention a pervasive cultural acceptance of Latino values and practices. California’s stated resistance to Trump’s immigration policies is a seminal test case for this massive deportation pledge. Would California be hurt worse, given the expected damage to the economy and the hard cost of providing police for the federal mandate, by losing federal funds (as Donald Trump has threatened) by resisting or to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement?

California is a bastion of Democratic control, and despite the above risks, the legislature is hitting back at Trump’s immigration agenda: “[New bills presented to California’s State Legislature] would provide free legal help to undocumented immigrants during deportation proceedings, offer more assistance in criminal court, and further limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration agents. The measures contrast sharply with the kind of policies that Mr. Trump pressed on the campaign trail.

“‘Throughout the presidential campaign and since, the president-elect has made many troubling statements that run counter to the principles that define California today,’ said Kevin de León, the Senate president pro tempore, who is backing the package. ‘There is no greater policy area than immigration where the comments run headlong to the values we share as Californians.’

“The legislation suggests the level of opposition Mr. Trump may face in California, a state where 40 percent of the population is Latino. The leaders of both chambers of the Legislature are Latino, as is the state’s attorney general-designee, Xavier Becerra. Mr. de León said that pushing immigration measures would be a priority of the Legislature.” New York Times, December 4^th.

 The effort is equally a policy at the local level, as well and reaches far beyond California. “[In] Los Angeles, where nearly half of the city’s residents are Latino, Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to do everything he can to fight widespread deportations of illegal immigrants.

“In New York, with a large and diverse Latino population, Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged not to cooperate with immigration agents. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has declared that it ‘will always be a sanctuary city.’

“Across the nation, officials in sanctuary cities are gearing up to oppose President-elect Donald J. Trump if he follows through on a campaign promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. They are promising to maintain their policies of limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents.

“In doing so, municipal officials risk losing millions of dollars in federal assistance for their cities that helps pay for services like fighting crime and running homeless shelters. Mr. Trump has vowed to block all federal funding for cities where local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents…

“[But is cutting funding to “sanctuary” cities enough?] Some believe Mr. Trump could go further than simply pulling federal funding, perhaps fighting such policies in court or even prosecuting city leaders.

“‘This is uncharted territory in some ways, to see if they’re just playing chicken, or see if they will relent,’ said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reduced immigration.

“Cities have ‘gotten away with this for a long time because the federal government has never attempted to crack down on them,’ Ms. Vaughan said.

“The fight could also signal a twist in the struggle over the power of the federal government, as this time liberal cities — rather than conservative states — resist what they see as federal intervention… Some believe Mr. Trump could go further than simply pulling federal funding, perhaps fighting such policies in court or even prosecuting city leaders.

“‘This is uncharted territory in some ways, to see if they’re just playing chicken, or see if they will relent,’ said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reduced immigration.

“Cities have “gotten away with this for a long time because the federal government has never attempted to crack down on them,” Ms. Vaughan said.

“The fight could also signal a twist in the struggle over the power of the federal government, as this time liberal cities — rather than conservative states — resist what they see as federal intervention.

“Cities ‘may not have the power to give people rights,’ said Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University School of Law. ‘But they have a lot of power of resistance, and that’s what they’re displaying right now.’” NY Times.

It is interesting to watch the Republican party, seemingly committed to downsizing federal interference with local control, that decries “activist Supreme Court appointees,” believes there is overall an excessive federal bureaucracy, and has taken deep steps to criticize Hillary Clinton’s email missteps and conflicts-of-interest with her activities vis-à-vis the Clinton foundation take the following steps: Attack local communities trying to preserve their economic and cultural integrity by opposing wholesale local involvement in enforcing federal deportation polices, have a president-elect who openly declares that he considers himself free of those conflict of interest limitations as he continues directly and without limitation business interests that directly benefit from his policies, want to appoint a super-activist Supreme Court appointee to undo a rather large number of rulings that are unpopular with conservatives, has a vice president who believes all of his emails are totally private and are willing to let the federal government grow substantially to contain policies they favor and cut only governmental programs that they do not like. Hypocrisy? What do you think?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the coming test of wills, I expect a lot more people are going to be hurt, maybe the political integrity of the nation itself, well beyond those targeted by the Trump administration for deportation.