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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

GOP turning up the heat on ‘sanctuary cities’

Politico
By Seung Min Kim
July 14, 2015

Congressional Republicans are ramping up pressure on President Barack Obama over the contentious issue of “sanctuary cities” — grilling administration officials, proposing a flurry of bills and threatening to block funding for cities that provide safe harbor to undocumented immigrants.

A growing chorus of GOP lawmakers, and Democrats such as California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, are mulling a legislative push to target sanctuary cities — locations where officials refuse to cooperate with federal immigration orders.

The issue has gained political urgency since the death of Kathryn Steinle, whom authorities say was shot and killed on a San Francisco pier earlier this month by an immigrant in the U.S. illegally.

On Tuesday, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee voted to block sanctuary cities from getting certain federal grants as part of a broader bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. Meanwhile, key Senate Republicans signaled they would soon take up sanctuary cities legislation.

And House Republicans used an oversight hearing Tuesday to repeatedly push Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the issue, demanding that he force sanctuary cities to comply with federal immigration requests.

“You work for the United States of America,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who chairs the House panel overseeing immigration, told Johnson. “How in the hell can a city tell you no?”

Johnson rebutted those calls during the testy hearing, which ran nearly four hours, and the Homeland Security chief also repeatedly defended how the Obama administration has carried out immigration laws — dismissing GOP criticism of Obama’s enforcement record as “fiction.”

“I do not believe that we should mandate the conduct of state and local law enforcement through federal legislation,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I believe that the most effective way to work with jurisdictions … is through a cooperative effort.”

The killing of Steinle has galvanized proponents of stricter immigration laws who say the suspect, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, should have never been released from custody and should have been deported to his native Mexico. Lopez-Sanchez, who pleaded not guilty to the charges last week, had already been removed from the United States five times and had a lengthy criminal record. The issue has lit up the 2016 campaign trail, with GOP presidential contenders using Steinle’s death to press their case for stricter immigration laws.

Federal immigration officials had asked the San Francisco sheriff to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement once Lopez-Sanchez was released. But San Francisco is one of more than 200 jurisdictions nationwide that ignores those requests, believing they are unconstitutional and breed mistrust between immigrant communities and police.

GOP lawmakers have seized on the circumstances of Steinle’s death to strike back at Obama, arguing that the administration has been too lax in enforcing immigration laws. And her killing has spurred a legislative push from many Republicans and even some Democrats to zero in on sanctuary cities, throwing the issue of immigration back into the Hill spotlight more than two years after the Senate passed a comprehensive reform bill that was ignored by the House.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is calling on other top Obama administration officials — Sarah Saldana, the director of ICE, and Leon Rodriguez, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — to appear before the panel next week. And the committee’s chairman hinted that legislative action could be next.

“The best I can talk to you right now is, I’m trying to write a bill,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a brief interview Monday. “But there’s a dozen bills in, so if we want to do something, there’s plenty that can be done.”

Two conservative Republicans — Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Vitter of Louisiana — had separately proposed amendments to an unrelated education bill that would restrict funding for sanctuary cities. Vitter said Tuesday that he would not push for a vote on his proposal, since Republicans have agreed to take up the issue in the Judiciary Committee sometime this month.

“If it’s not, I’ll certainly be back,” Vitter said.

Meanwhile, Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, two key GOP backers of immigration reform, have proposed a bill that would require federal immigration authorities to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who have been arrested or convicted of serious crimes within 90 days.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a 2016 presidential candidate, has legislation that would force state and local law enforcement officials to comply with ICE detainers, which are requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to local law enforcement to keep an immigrant in custody, even if the immigrant would otherwise be released. And even liberal senators like Boxer and Feinstein — a former San Francisco mayor — are discussing a potential bill that targets sanctuary cities.

“We’re still working on it,” Feinstein said Monday night. “Let me get something that’s right first.”

Republicans are also eyeing the purse strings. In addition to the House Appropriations Committee’s vote Tuesday, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) — who leads the panel overseeing funding for the Justice Department — asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week to withhold certain DOJ grants from cities unless they cooperate with federal immigration requests.

“Cities that refuse to comply with immigration officials and release dangerous criminals back into our communities put innocent American lives at risk,” said Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), who wrote the provision the House committee adopted Tuesday. “If these cities wish to continue to subvert the law, they will do so without the support of American taxpayers.”

But much of the focus Tuesday was on the House Judiciary hearing, where Republicans questioned why federal officials weren’t doing more to force cities and states to abide by immigration statutes.

Despite Johnson’s defense of the administration’s immigration enforcement history, Gowdy contended that Lopez-Sanchez is “Exhibit A that we must not have functional control over the border or he would not have reentered” multiple times.

“It may have been a sanctuary for that defendant,” Gowdy said, referring to San Francisco’s policy of not cooperating with federal immigration requests. “But it sure as hell was not a sanctuary for a young woman walking with her father.”

Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) pushed Johnson to force cities and states to comply with ICE detainers. If cities and states won’t comply, the Obama administration should go to court, Goodlatte argued.

“Politely asking for cooperation from sanctuary cities is a fool’s errand,” Goodlatte said Tuesday.

Democrats are largely urging caution, condemning the killing but denouncing Republican efforts to toughen up immigration enforcement.

“As we think about the proper way to respond to this situation, we must make sure we do not adopt policies that would diminish public safety and undermine our commitment to the Constitution and civil liberties,” said Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

As part of his sweeping executive actions on immigration last November, Obama announced that his administration would scrap Secure Communities, a controversial fingerprint-sharing program meant to track down immigrants in the country illegally. GOP lawmakers had backed Secure Communities, but Obama replaced that with the so-called Priority Enforcement Program, which the administration says would better target immigrants who are top priorities for deportation.


Johnson said Tuesday that of the 49 biggest jurisdictions, 33 have committed to cooperating with Homeland Security officials on the new enforcement program. Five have said no while 11 others are considering, and Johnson said he has personally pressed San Francisco officials to participate in the new program.

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