In Support of Sanctuary Cities

When you hear the term “sanctuary city,” what images come to mind? The far right would have you believe that the sanctuary movement is all about defiance, that it consists of liberals who want so badly to thwart President Trump’s agenda that they are willing to offer refuge to violent criminals, thus putting other Americans at risk. [E1] To be fair, the rhetoric on the left can be misleading too. It depicts sanctuary cities as enclaves of justice, cosmopolitan oases where immigrants can find relief in a country that is otherwise run by racists. [E2]

The polarizing political language makes it hard to discern the truth about sanctuary cities, or more generally, about immigration policy. Regarding the latter, the officials who actually oversee immigration in our country – whether Republican or Democrat – have to uphold two values which are sometimes at odds with each other: security (specifically the safety of U.S. citizens) and decency (specifically the respect and dignity with which we treat those who would like become contributing citizens). Republicans tend to emphasize the importance of security and depict Democrats as undermining it, while Democrats tend to emphasize the importance of decency and depict Republicans as tossing it aside. In reality, both are important and need to be upheld.

As you may have guessed from the above commentary, I like to see myself as a moderate, as the kind of person who can see the validity of both sides and who is open to compromise. However, after I learned about how immigration actually works in our country, I discovered that we are way out of balance in the way that we pursue these two values. The Trump Administration has placed so much emphasis on security and so little emphasis on decency that grave abuses and injustices are occurring on a regular basis. So despite the fact that I would like to be seen as moderate, I find myself participating in the sanctuary movement as a corrective to an administration that shows such little concern for the well-being of immigrants. [E3]

So what is a sanctuary city, really? It is not a municipality that flat-out refuses to cooperate with Immigration & Customs Enforcement altogether. On the contrary, the police in sanctuary cities such as Camden or Jersey City will still arrest individuals who has been involved in violent crimes and turn them over to ICE to be detained and/or deported. No one in the sanctuary movement is suggesting that we should stop doing this, or that we should harbor violent criminals in our cities.

Instead, a sanctuary city is one that evaluates ICE detention requests on a case-by-case basis rather than giving the federal government whatever it asks for. After all, ICE asks local governments to detain individuals who have violated any law, including minor traffic laws and even jaywalking, so that they can deport them. The cities are expected to hold these individuals for up to 72 hours – covering the expenses of food, lodging, and security – so that ICE agents can transfer them to a long-term detention facility. The people who are arrested for these minor violations are not dangerous individuals, and the ICE requests disparage them by having the cities hold them for double or triple the length that they would be held as US citizens who had made the same violations. Indeed, these policies encourage the police to racially profile Hispanic people and arrest them for petty or even made-up violations. [E4]

Because the federal government is not paying for immigrants to be detained, cities have a right to decide whether to comply with detention requests on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, it is very misleading when far-right legislators such as Congressman Todd Rokita say that, “Politicians don’t get to pick and choose what laws they comply with.” That is true, but these ICE detention requests are not laws; they are requests. And as the courts have concluded, the federal government does not have the authority to compel cooperation.

More importantly, there is no evidence that sanctuary cities are less safe because of their immigration policies. On the contrary, immigrants are actually less likely to commit violent crimes than the rest of the population. [E5] But far-right Republicans have been working hard to create the opposite impression – that all undocumented immigrants are dangerous – by scouring the news and police reports across the country for any incident in which an undocumented person who was not turned over to ICE by a sanctuary city went on to commit a violent crime. The best example they could come up with is the case of Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant who was accused of murdering Kate Steinle, but who was found not guilty in a court of law. [E6]

But even if they aren’t committing violent crimes, undocumented immigrants are criminals by virtue of the fact that they came here illegally, right? So why should we tolerate that? Because many people who come to the United States illegally are desperately trying to escape very threatening situations and they have been given no legal means to do this. [E7] This insight became real to me when three young ladies started attending my church whose mother was being attained for crossing the border illegally. She was living in Honduras and had been applying for legal citizenship for nearly a decade, all while trying to escape gang violence. When one of the gangs started targeting her family and actually murdered her cousin, she felt that she couldn’t wait any longer, and she fled to the United States to keep her daughters safe. As my church has made an effort to support her, we have learned that her case is not at all exceptional. We have been trying to apply for asylum for her, but this kind of situation is so common that many judges won’t hear it.

In light of this complete imbalance between security and decency, in which the federal government is ignoring the human needs of immigrants altogether to enact security measures that don’t actually help, I encourage you to call your representatives to the Indiana legislature and urge them to reject the SLAP bill. Also, if you would like to help one family that has been harmed by this unjust system, you make a donation through this crowdfunding page.

Endnotes

[E1] This is the narrative that is promoted by Congressman Todd Rokita, as can be seen from this article in the IndyStar: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/04/rep-rokita-proposes-bill-threatening-jail-time-1-million-fine-sanctuary-city-leaders/919546001/

[E2] This is a narrative that is often promoted by Democratic mayors (including Hogsett, to an extent) and city officials who like to depict their cities as "welcoming places." While their response to ICE may be influenced by a desire to protect immigrants to some degree, policies like this are not enough to make cities "welcoming" or "just" in and of themselves. Besides that, the suggestion that racism is limited to rural areas is just plain false.

[E3] There is not an official "sanctuary movement club," but I have been in conversation with various groups that have wanted to promote more just and reasonable immigration policies at the local level. I even participated in a march last summer calling for an end to the sheriff's unconditional compliance with ICE detainer requests. Since I was near the front of the line, photographers got some photos of me, and my image from that March has appeared in at least five subsequent IndyStar articles on the subject, making me wish that I had dressed up a little more on that particular day..

[E4] See http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/USA/INT_CERD_NGO_USA_17787_E.pdf 

[E5] See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigrants-crime.html?mtrref=mail.zoho.com&gwh=BF4BEF66A588EE8D5B605F6E434276AF&gwt=pay. Thanks to Sister Tracey Horan for pointing me to this article.

[E6] See http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/30/us/kate-steinle-murder-trial-verdict/index.html. I do not want to deny or downplay that this is an extremely tragic situation. I just do not believe that it makes for a strong argument against city officials using discernment about whether or not to hand someone over to ICE.

[E7] Few American citizens are aware of how difficult applying for citizenship to the United States can be. People can apply to become citizens through a few major avenues, including having a family member who is a citizen, having a job offer or highly specialized skill set, or by putting their name in the "lottery." Those who have a "way in" still have to undergo long wait times for the paperwork to get there, which for some parts of the world averages a 10-year waiting period. (Can you imagine waiting 10 years to be united with your spouse, for example?)

For those who do not have family connections or highly specialized skills, your only hope is to get in through the lottery. The government grants 55,000 lottery visas to immigrants each year, out of the millions who apply. In 2011, for example, about 1 out of every 220 people who applied through the lottery system were accepted. In other words, the other 99.5% of people who applied had no legal means to get here. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-1#9c