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Sanctuary Cities and DoJ Funding: The Hypocrisy of Jeff Sessions

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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a surprise White House appearance on March 27, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his intent to make America’s cities less safe and more vulnerable to crime unless he gets his way.

He didn’t say it quite like that, of course. In fact, he asserted the opposite, accusing so-called “sanctuary cities” of “mak[ing] our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on the streets” and conditioning future grants from the US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice on certification by the recipient state and local governments that they are not “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the federal government should be handing out money and equipment (especially military equipment) to state and local police departments and court systems in the first place. Such gifts always come with strings attached, as Sessions is demonstrating with this stand. Better to keep local law enforcement locally funded and locally controlled.

That said, Sessions and his department presumably believe that the money in question (recent examples include grants for “Smart Policing,” police body cameras, and sexual assault kits) makes communities safer. That’s why the money gets handed out, at least in theory.

If Sessions does believe that his grants help keep us safe, then he’s essentially threatening to increase the likelihood that you or I will be assaulted, raped, mugged or murdered unless our local, county and state governments bend to his will.

That’s not very nice, Jeff. In fact, it’s the opposite of your job as Attorney General. As is supporting the very idea of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement “detainers.”

I happen to live in a “sanctuary county.” In 2015, Alachua County, Florida Sheriff Sadie Darnell set forth her department’s policy, which seems eminently reasonable: The department will not honor ICE “detainers” unless they’re accompanied by judicial orders or warrants.

Frankly, that should be the bottom line for every law enforcement agency in the country. When it comes to keeping someone in a cage who would otherwise be free to go, “because ICE wants him” isn’t good enough. The US Constitution is clear: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

If federal law enforcement officers can’t even be bothered to see a judge and get an arrest warrant, they shouldn’t be asking local law enforcement to hold someone for them, nor should Jeff Sessions be threatening the rest of us over it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In Praise of Sanctuary Cities

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English: A sign at the international boundary ...
A sign at the international boundary between Canada and the United States in Point Roberts, Washington (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Politicians can’t resist the opportunity to pile on to a juicy news story for a quick bit of campaign face time.  The bloodier the better, so in the wake of Kate Steinle’s murder in San Francisco, allegedly at the hands of an “illegal immigrant,” it’s no surprise to see the usual suspects getting their knickers in a public twist over “sanctuary cities.”

A prominent anti-immigration propaganda mill, the Center for Immigration Studies, classifies more than 200  US cities, counties and states as “sanctuary cities.” These political subdivisions, as a matter of public policy, ignore and/or decline to cooperate with the federal government’s immigration regulation schemes.

Those of us who are more concerned with the truth than with exploiting a woman’s death for cheap political gain should support sanctuary cities as an unmitigated good.

Even setting aside several inconvenient facts — the fact that “the borders of the United States” command no more moral significance than the turf lines of any other street gang; the fact that the US Constitution forbids the federal government to regulate immigration; the fact that “illegal immigration” statistically reduces rather than increases violent crime; and the fact that “illegal immigration” keeps the US economy afloat by holding down labor costs and therefore the price of everything from produce to poultry to home construction — sanctuary cities are, quite simply, a bulwark against federal law enforcement overreach which represents a danger to all our freedoms.

FBI agents don’t go around handing out speeding tickets on the streets of Peoria. Policing local traffic isn’t the federal government’s job.

Florida and California don’t have their own navies or customs inspectors. Conducting foreign wars and policing international commerce aren’t duties of the state governments.

Nor is it the duty of any city, county or state government to enforce US immigration law. Each level of government has its own duties and functions. Sanctuary cities are federalism in action.

Every dollar or minute that a police officer in Boston or Boise spends doing Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s job is a dollar or minute that police officer can’t spend doing his or her own job.

To put it a different way, local resources spent enforcing federal immigration law are local resources no longer available to spend on investigating rapes, robberies, murders and thefts. Sanctuary cities have their priorities straight. Opponents of sanctuary cities don’t.

In truth, nothing less than a police state along the lines of the former East Germany could even make a dent in “illegal immigration.” Every dollar spent on that evil and impossible task at ANY level of government is a waste at best and a threat to the public’s freedom and safety at worst. Sanctuary cities guard everyone’s liberty.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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