How sanctuary cities actually work

When we think about sanctuary cities, we
tend to imagine, depending on our
political view, either lawless cesspools
where federal law is utterly ignored;
pretty much the definition of anarchy
human sacrifices, rapes, murders,
Satan worshippers
American lives are being lost
they are breaking the law,
they are harboring fugitives
this is absolutely nuts
or havens for one of the nation's
most marginalized groups.
You are safe in Chicago.
This is about human beings, families.
and will continue to be a place of refuge
But, in reality, neither of those descriptions quite fit.
And to understand why, you have to put yourself
in the shoes of a local police officer.
These policies are different in different places.
In Chicago, it means city employees aren't supposed
to share residents immigration status
with other people.
In Washington DC, it
means police officers are barred from
asking residents about their immigration status.
But often, it comes down to this:
how does the local police officer handle
an unauthorized immigrant that he's
already arrested for some other reason?
Let's say a cop pulls someone over for speeding.
The cop notices this person has
an unpaid speeding ticket, and they missed
their day in court.
So, the cop arrests the person,
books them into the local jail.
While they wait for someone to post
bail, the person gets fingerprinted.
That's part of the booking process.
Those fingerprints then get sent to an FBI
database, and then a database kept by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
That step is mandatory.
Whether or not a city calls itself a sanctuary city,
it still has to send those fingerprints
through the FBI database.
If the fingerprints match up with someone who ICE
knows is an unauthorized immigrant,
they might send the local cops holding this
person something called a detainer request.
The detainer request is just that:
it's a request.
The federal government is asking, not demanding,
that police hold that person for an extra 48
hours after they would normally be released.
That gives ICE time to come by,
pick them up, start the deportation process.
Now, ICE can't force local law enforcement
to hold someone and just by sending one
of these detainer requests.
The Constitution's Tenth Amendment prohibits
state governments from having to enforce federal law.
And some federal courts have
decided that detainer requests fall into that category.
So, if you're a local police chief or sheriff,
and you get one of these requests, you have a choice.
Do you honor the request?
Or do you let the person go?
Let's say you honor the request
and keep the person in jail for an
extra 48 hours.
Ice comes to pick them up,
and they get deported.
Word gets out around the immigrant community:
any time you interact with local police,
it could mean deportation.
Eventually, immigrants will be afraid to call the police,
even when they're the victims of crime,
or the witnesses to it.
And then, immigrants become easy targets.
Because the bad guys know
that many immigrants will not call the police.
For a local police chief, this is a big problem.
It's impossible to do their jobs
when they don't have people's trust.
Five hundred thousand Angelenos, people who live
in Los Angeles, are undocumented immigrants.
I need their cooperation.
I need them work with their local police stations.
I need them to be witnesses to violent crime.
What about the other option?
What happens if you ignore the order,
and let this person go home?
First, there's no guarantee that
they won't get deported anyway.
Whether a city considers itself a
sanctuary or not, local law enforcement
can't stop ICE from deporting someone.
Think of the levels of government like rungs on a ladder.
You have the federal government
at the top level; that includes agencies like ICE.
You have the state government:
governors, legislatures, in the middle.
And then, at the bottom, you have local
government: mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs.
If the federal government issues a
detainer request, and the local police
department refuses to accept it,
the state government can step in by taking
away one of the state funding streams
from the local police.
That's what happened in Texas in 2017.
The governor of the great state of Texas,
Greg Abbott, has declared he will sign a
law banning sanctuary cities.
He's already issued an order that cuts
funding to those sanctuary cities.
This is dangerous and I will not allow it as
governor of Texas.
This map shows the
counties in red that always cooperate
with ICE, and the ones that don't;
those are an orange, yellow, and green.
The green counties have the most restrictions on
when they cooperate with ICE detainer requests.
In late January 2017,
shortly after he got into office,
President Donald Trump signed an executive order
that opens the door to withholding
federal funds from sanctuary cities or counties.
The wording of that order is
vague, and it's already being challenged in federal court.
But if Trump's plan does
move forward, it could put local law
enforcement officers across the country
in a lose-lose situation.
For them, deciding whether to honor
a detainer request
is often about choosing between
financial security on one hand,
and public safety on the other.
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How sanctuary cities actually work

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