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Sanctuary cities are in the news this week. The working definition is a city, county, or state that limits the amount of cooperation their local police force has with federal immigration officers. To the point, local police do not hold people for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when their only crime is being illegal immigrants. This article gives a good overview of the situation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to cut funding for one county after its sheriff announced the agency would be scaling back its cooperation with federal immigration.
Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez announced last week she's scaling back the amount of aid her department provides federal immigration agents in detaining suspects who might be in the country illegally, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
Starting Feb. 1, sheriff's officials will begin honoring so-called immigration holds or "detainers" placed by federal authorities only when a suspect is booked into the Travis County Jail on charges of capital murder, aggravated sexual assault and "continuous smuggling of persons."
Otherwise, federal agents must have a court order or arrest warrant signed by a judge for the jail to continue housing a person whose immigration status is in question.
On Wednesday, Jan 25, President Trump issued an executive order stating that sanctuary jurisdictions would not be eligible for federal funds.
[Continues...]
City officials, from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Haven, Syracuse and Austin, Tex., said they were prepared for a protracted fight.
"We're going to defend all of our people regardless of where they come from, regardless of their immigration status," Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said at a news conference with other city officials.
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared: "I want to be clear: We're going to stay a sanctuary city. There is no stranger among us. Whether you're from Poland or Pakistan, whether you're from Ireland or India or Israel and whether you're from Mexico or Moldova, where my grandfather came from, you are welcome in Chicago as you pursue the American dream."
[...] "The rhetoric doesn't match the legal authority," said Peter L. Markowitz, the director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. "In fact, the president has very limited power to exercise any kind of significant defunding."
According to a 2012 Supreme Court decision, Mr. Markowitz said, Congress is not permitted to set conditions on spending to coerce states or localities to participate in a federal program against their will. Any conditions, at a minimum, must be directly related to the punitive action.
As of time of editing, 12:30AM EDT, this is the newest article on the topic:
President Trump is hailing the first victory in his fight against "sanctuary cities" after a South Florida mayor ordered his employees on Thursday to begin working more closely with federal immigration authorities.
For years, Miami-Dade County has refused to hold some undocumented immigrants in its jails for federal immigration agents. But after Trump signed an executive order threatening to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez changed his mind.
Gimenez signed an executive order Thursday ordering the director of his corrections department to begin honoring all requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hold immigration suspects in Miami-Dade County jails.
[...] Gimenez said he made the decision to ensure that the county does not lose out on $355 million in federal funding it has coming in 2017.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @03:50PM
Libertarians have always warned of the future danger posed by collecting ever more power into a centralized government (especially a national government). Enjoy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by number6x on Friday January 27 2017, @04:35PM
How dare these local politicians expect the federal government to produce a warrant or a court order, when the federal government demands that the local government keep a person (citizen or otherwise) in jail.
The next thing you know they'll be demanding due process, the rights of free speech and practice of religion, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to bear arms and who knows what else.
Just trust the federal government, if they say so it must be for your own good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:21PM
The jail shouldn't hold anybody for the federal government, but they should always notify the federal government prior to releasing anybody. If the federal government has reason to arrest somebody, they can show up at the exit and wait. The jail says "you're free, there is the exit" and the person walks out to where the federal agents are waiting. The federal agents say "you're under arrest" and put a fresh new pair of handcuffs on the person.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday January 27 2017, @06:35PM
I'm perfectly fine with the cities demanding that the feds use due process.
I'm also perfectly fine with the cities telling the feds when they have charged someone of questionable immigration status, or even when arrested for a serious offense.
If the cities don't want to hold "locally innocent" people in jail for warrantless feds, I'm fine with it too, as long as they collaborate afterwards with the feds when they do provide the warrants.
"We're going to defend all of our people (...), regardless of their immigration status" sounds really wrong to me.
Don't spend time and money to deal with them? Maybe. But "defend" do means that you're actively using your resources to protect someone who is breaking the rules.
If you don't like the immigration rules, campaign to get them changed.
You don't want to end up with the burden of citizen children in foster care after their parents get shipped out, that's nice and smart. Change the rules, so that the situation doesn't happen when people get caught after breaking them.
The immigration process is an unfair, complicated and burdensome bitch, I sure know. Many people get in trouble just by being the kids of people who decided to bypass the nasty system. Change the rules to accommodate the innocent, rather than claim that you should protect everyone.
Be rational. It sounds silly under the New Order. But even zealots have to settle for a practical rational solution every now and then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @11:36PM
You can't change the rules if you are disenfranchised.
Deportation is a cruel and unusual punishment. Don't let anyone do that to anybody, legal or not.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday January 27 2017, @11:49PM
I'm talking about local elected people ganging up to change the rules.
> Deportation is a cruel and unusual punishment.
Cruel depends on the conditions. "Single guy who snuck in last week to get a better pay than in democratic Chile" isn't the same thing as "kid who was 1 when his parents fled dictator X, but didn't apply for asylum because US supported the coup".
In neither case is it unusual, anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @03:18AM
Ah. The siren's song of the "progressive." How would you feel if someone sneaked into your home, started squatting and then expected you to feed them and pay their medical expenses? Maybe they even worked and supported themselves. Would you still let them stay or would you think showing them the door was no longer cruel and unusual punishment?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @08:47PM
Libertarians have always ignored the danger that having corporations collecting all that information represented.
Libertarianism is a disease of the mind primarily characterized by a complete inability to accurately predict the consequences of actions. The government shouldn't have all the power, so clearly that means it's OK for corporate interests to have all of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @09:05PM
I don't know what liars have been calling themselves libertarians in your hearing, but libertarians in general are pretty big, not only on governments interfering with people, but people interfering with each other.
Someone somewhere didn't read the fine print, bolted upright and screeched: "LIBERTARIANS WANT TO SELL OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS TO CORPOROFASCIST VAMPIRES!!!" and unfortunately that drooling caricature took hold in the minds of people too busy or foolish to research these things.
Oh well, it'll sort itself out in a few decades.
Of course, for you to work this out, you'd have to understand different flavours of libertarians, how they reach their conclusions, understand the differences between minarchists, anarchocapitalists, contractarians and various others. Hard work, I know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @11:44PM
Libertarianism: the true Scotsman of the political world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @12:01AM
Only sometimes.
When it's anyone aligned with the major parties, they're always the untrue scotsman. Don't vote for them! They're evil! They will allow you to have abortions, do drugs and sell your aborted babies to megacorps!
Vote libertarian for a cyberpunk dystopia!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @02:58PM
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday January 28 2017, @01:37PM
Try to keep in mind that corporations get their permission to exist from government, not from Libertarians.