Nearly five years ago, The Claremont Institute posted an article which provides the basic facts:
- Across the nation cities from New York to Houston to San Diego forbid city officials—including police—from inquiring into anyone’s immigration status or cooperating with immigration officials. The police may not stop or detain persons solely due to their immigration status or even inquire into their status while making routine traffic stops or misdemeanor arrests. These policies have, in effect, created safe havens for illegal immigrants, including criminal aliens.
Cities began adopting sanctuary laws in the 1980s, supposedly to foster trust between illegal immigrants and police. Proponents argued that crimes would not be reported, witnesses to crime would not come forth and immigrants wouldn’t cooperate with police if they feared deportation. Yet the policies adopted reflect the power of immigration advocacy groups more than concerns about crime prevention. Politicians in large cities with significant immigrant populations simply surrendered to the demands of immigrant rights groups that sought to minimize—if not extinguish—the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal aliens. Nor is it only immigrants’ rights groups that promote sanctuary cities. Business interests want a steady source of cheap, compliant and exploitable labor; the minions of the welfare state want to magnify their power by extending the largess of the administrative state to those who will, in all likelihood, take their place in the so-called “underclass.”
The resulting policies not only tolerate crime—after all, illegal immigrants are lawbreakers—but actively abet and protect criminal activity by handcuffing the powers of the police.
Nearly five years ago, the Institute reported that a minimum of 400,000 illegal immigrants had “received final deportation orders from a federal judge,” yet “failed to show up for deportation.” Of these, nearly 100,000 were convicted criminals. The Institute reports: “In sanctuary cities police may not inquire into the deportation status of these aliens or apprehend them until they have committed another crime.”
Additionally, the Institute reported nearly five years ago, 25 percent of California’s prison population was illegal immigrants, “far in excess of their numbers in the general population. When these aliens finish their sentences they are subject to deportation. Yet it has been estimated that fewer than 50 percent of these criminals are actually deported.”
“Even criminal aliens who are actually deported later receive sanctuary in these cities upon their return to the United States,” the Institute reported. “Such returnees naturally look to sanctuary cities as safe havens.”
At this same time, Barack Obama was in the U.S. Senate. These were known facts. Keep this in mind...
[Full Article]
