CNN
By Michael Pearson
July 6, 2015
The
killing last week of a San Francisco woman, allegedly by an
undocumented immigrant with a felony record, has put the spotlight on
the city's policy of refusing to
honor federal requests to hold on to people found to be in the country
illegally.
San
Francisco authorities released suspect Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez in
April after dropping the drug charges on which they had asked federal
authorities to turn him
over -- even though federal officials had asked the city to let them
know if they were going to cut him loose.
Suspect tells TV station he killed San Francisco woman
The city, however, doesn't honor such immigration detention requests under its 26-year-old sanctuary law.
San
Francisco is one of dozens of cities, counties and states across the
country that have laws, policies or regulations that prevent employees
from cooperating with federal
immigration enforcement efforts.
Here's some information about sanctuary cities and the debate surrounding them:
What is a sanctuary city?
There's
no legal definition of a sanctuary city, county or state, and what it
means varies from place to place. But jurisdictions that fall under that
controversial term
-- supporters oppose it -- generally have policies or laws that limit
the extent to which law enforcement and other government employees will
go to assist the federal government on immigration matters.
Some
communities use nonbinding resolutions, executive orders, police
department policies or orders, while others use laws to enforce such
policies, according to the Congressional
Research Service.
In
San Francisco, for instance, a 1989 law called the City and County of
Refuge ordinance prohibits city employees from helping federal
immigration enforcement efforts
unless compelled by court order or state law.
How many are there?
More
than 200 state and local jurisdictions have policies that call for not
honoring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention requests,
the agency's director,
Sarah Saldana, told Congress in March.
What's their history?
The
sanctuary movement is said to have grown out of efforts by churches in
the 1980s to provide sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing violence at
home amid reluctance
by the federal government to grant them refugee status.
It's
also a product of the long-running national immigration debate, in
which officials in some more diverse and liberal communities sometimes
take issue with aggressive
immigration enforcement efforts.
What's the argument for sanctuary status?
Proponents
say that by encouraging members of immigrant communities to work with
police without fear of deportation, such policies help authorities
improve public safety
by helping authorities identify and arrest dangerous criminals who
might otherwise go undetected.
"The
cities and states that encourage police to enforce civil immigration
laws are the real 'sanctuaries' for criminals, because they are
alienating a segment of the community
that experiences crime, but is afraid to report it," Lynn Tramonte,
deputy director of America's Voice, wrote in a 2011 report on sanctuary
cities.
America's Voice is an advocacy group that works to secure citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Supporters
say such policies are widely supported by police groups such as the
International Association of Chiefs of Police and chiefs from the
nation's largest police
departments because they help communities unite to fight crime.
What do critics say?
"Unfortunately,
a lot of cities in this country have decided they don't want to
cooperate with ICE," Julie Myers Wood, former assistant secretary for
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, told CNN on Monday. "They think that cooperating with ICE
causes them problems with respect to the immigrant community and public
safety, but in fact it does exactly the opposite, as we've seen here."
Such
policies "ignore the fact that if the illegal aliens were removed from
the U.S., they would not be here to become victims, and the predators
would be out of the country
too," Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC, which opposes sanctuary policies,
says on its website.
"Sanctuary
policies -- official or otherwise, result in safe havens (or safer
havens) for illegal aliens involved in a variety of criminal enterprises
-- since their illegal
schemes are less likely to be uncovered and face less risk of
deportation if caught by local law enforcement," the website says.
"Sanctuary
policies also provide an environment helpful to Latin American drug
cartels, gangs, and terrorist cells -- since their activities are less
likely to be detected
and reported by law enforcement."
Some
Republican presidential candidates have used similar language. Donald
Trump has blamed immigration policy for Kate Steinle's death. Another
Republican, Jeb Bush,
agreed, saying such policies encourage such crimes.
What has the federal government said?
In
March, Saldana, the ICE director, drew heat from immigrant rights
supporters after appearing at a congressional hearing to endorse efforts
to rein in the sanctuary
movement.
In
written testimony submitted to the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, Saldana said that a significant factor affecting
efforts to deport undocumented
immigrants "has been the increase in state and local jurisdictions that
are limiting their partnership, or wholly refusing to cooperate, with
ICE immigration enforcement efforts."
"While
the reasons for this may vary, including state and local legislative
restrictions and judicial findings of state and local liability, in
certain circumstances we
believe less cooperation may increase the risk that dangerous criminals
are returned to the streets, putting the public and our officers at
greater risk," she said.
During questioning, she was asked if she would support a new federal law mandating local cooperation.
"Thank you, amen," Saldana reportedly answered, according to media reports.
That
stance quickly drew the attention of critics such the American Civil
Liberties Union, which said in a blog post that Saldana's comments
"insulted all the states and
localities across the country who have wisely decided to stay out of
immigration enforcement."
She
quickly issued a statement saying that any such legislation would "be a
highly counterproductive step and lead to more resistance and less
cooperation in our overall
efforts to promote public safety."
What's next?
It's
sure to become a point of discussion on the presidential campaign
trail, in local elections and among the professional debating corps, but
given the complexities
of the issue and decades of difficulty reaching any consensus on the
issue, it's far less certain the incident will result in any widespread
changes.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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