Senate Democrats blocked a Republican proposal Tuesday night to get tough on jurisdictions across the country that are so-called “sanctuary ordinances.” From Chicago to San Francisco and elsewhere, countless communities across the nation function as safe havens for undocumented immigrants facing deportation. These jurisdictions restrict their cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies.
The Senate bill would have cut off federal law enforcement funds to sanctuary communities. The law failed to get enough votes as Democrats resisted the GOP effort. A similar law, however, passed the House in July, and legislators in North Carolina banned sanctuary policies altogether. Michigan and Texas are pursuing similar paths.
In an editorial, the New York Times recently slammed the GOP for attacking sanctuary cities:
“The laws are a class-action slander against an immigrant population that has been scapegoated for the crimes of a few, and left stranded by the failure of legislative reform that would open a path for them to live fully within the law.”
The editorial adds that the bill should be called Trump’s law, for it was the Republican presidential hopeful whose hate speech led to the stigmatization of undocumented immigrants, even those with no or minor criminal offenses.
The NYT, however, also takes a shot at President Obama and his Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, who — the editorial points out –created a harsh mass deportation regime called “Secure Communities” in order to gain Republican support for immigration reform.
In a July editorial, the Chicago Tribune criticized the conservative’s assault on sanctuary cities as “misguided.”
To argue sanctuary ordinances were making America unsafe, right-wing pundits had used the July murder of Kate Steinle by an undocumented immigrant in San Francisco who was sheltered by local authorities. Steinle’s brother later complained that Donald Trump and others were politicizing the tragedy to further an anti-immigrant agenda.
The sanctuary movement has evolved to fill the gaps left by President Obama’s immigration action. While many undocumented immigrants were able to push back their deportation dates under the administration’s Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs, others did not qualify. Some six million undocumented immigrants were ineligible for the programs, which meant they were still at risk of deportation.
Local law enforcement has more important jobs to do than aid the feds in hunting down and deporting unauthorized immigrants who have not committed serious crimes. California understood this with a progressive counter-piece to the draconian proposals discussed in the Senate today: in 2013, the Trust Act protected immigrants from detention, and other laws allow immigrants more rights and grant them access to driver’s licenses.
Migration is not a crime, and those undocumented immigrants who have committed no crimes or only minor crimes should be treated with humanity. But in the Republicans’ radical anti-immigrant agenda, there seems to be no room for compassion.
