Immigration policy gridlock allows sanctuary cities to persist

The legality of so-called sanctuary cities became a top concern in the nation with the killing this summer of a 32-year-old woman named Kate Steinle. A seven-time felon who’d been deported five times, yet was still in the United States illegally, stands accused of shooting Steinle to death July 1 in San Francisco as she walked along a pier with her father.

San Francisco is a so-called “sanctuary city,” a political term with imprecise meaning. About 350 cities in this country have some sort of sanctuary policy, and no two are exactly alike. In general, though, a sanctuary policy describes a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach by local law enforcement to illegal immigration. Police handle the crime and the suspects before them, and they don’t ask about immigration status.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had held Steinle’s alleged killer, Juan Francisco Sanchez, in jail awaiting deportation. But a 20-year-old warrant against him

for drug possession in San Francisco turned up, so ICE took Sanchez there to answer for it. ICE asked the city to alert the agency when prosecutors had finalized Sanchez’s marijuana case because the agency had planned to deport him after that. But the district attorney decided not to prosecute the old drug charge, and that meant Sanchez was free. ICE received no notification, and three months later, Steinle was killed.

“The problem is that the government is in gridlock and has not been able to reach any kind of consensus on what a rational immigration policy should be for the country,” said Darrell Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. The group represents dozens of municipalities on public safety policies. “We do want cities and police agencies to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever they can, but we don’t want police officers and deputies to be involved in enforcing immigration laws. … That’s the responsibility of the federal government.”

Not only does the 10th Amendment implicitly restrict Congress from commandeering local law enforcement to carry out federal policies, local police also have neither the funds nor the training to do so, Stephens said.

Jessica Vaughn with Center for Immigration Studies, a group that studies and publicizes policy failures that drive up illegal immigration, sees another way to look at it. ICE isn’t out patrolling the streets like local police, so it depends on local law enforcement for notification about criminals who may also be here illegally. When sanctuary policies put a wall between police and ICE, the danger to the public increases, Vaughn said.

“When we don’t even have the most routine immigration enforcement, that makes it possible for anyone to game the system, whether they’re coming to work on a farm or to start a terror cell,” Vaughn said.

The main argument for sanctuary policies is that immigrants won’t report crime as much if they fear police will turn them in for being here illegally.

“There really isn’t a connection between immigrants’ inclination to report crimes and their understanding of what kind of communication happens between the police and ICE. Crime reporting is a problem in communities all over the country. It has nothing to do, necessarily, with immigration status,” Vaughn said.

The concept of sanctuary cities is rooted in American churches. In the 1980s, people caught in the middle of Central American civil wars fled to the United States to escape the violence only to be met with deportation. Many religious leaders saw that as unjust. Churches openly defied the law and gave asylum, offering shelter, food, and legal advice. Around that same time, cities such as San Francisco began making sanctuary policies. Vaughn said the concept morphed into an ideology-driven opposition to enforcing immigration laws.

“It only takes a fairly minor increase in the amount of … immigration enforcement to really change the climate so that fewer people are going to try to come illegally and some of those who are here living illegally realize that it’s not that easy, not that comfortable,” Vaughn said. “That’s the attrition-through-enforcement theory that we think has worked in the past and would work in the future if ICE were allowed to do its job of enforcing the laws we have.”

But there is a lot of disagreement in Congress on what immigration laws should look like and how they should be enforced. So, for now, nothing is changing.

Steinle’s family has filed three claims against ICE, the Bureau of Land Management, and the sheriff of San Francisco for their handling of the man charged in the killing of their daughter and of the gun he allegedly used. The family blames lack of oversight by government agencies for Kate’s death.

Listen to Mary Reichard’s report on sanctuary cities on The World and Everything in It.