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Enforcement of Immigration Laws in Sanctuary Cities
In May 2017, The Texas Legislature passed Texas Senate Bill 4 that prohibited sanctuary cities in Texas. The bill requires police officers to work together with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It allows police officers to ask arrested persons their immigration status. However, this is not a requirement. It is at the discretion of police officers. Sanctuary cities lack this kind of legislation that ensures cooperation between police officers and ICE. Such cities purpose to undermine the operations of ICE. In some sanctuary cities, police officers are prohibited from helping ICE.
ICE has jurisdiction in the whole country. In some cities, police officers are required to facilitate the operations of ICE. However, sanctuary cities have put measures in place to block ICE from doing their job efficiently. Such measures include not honouring ICE detainers without warrants or court orders, barring police officers from cooperating with ICE, underfunding activities related to immigration enforcement and prohibiting communication with ICE. Sanctuary cities include Marysville and Seattle in Washington; Springfield and Eugene in Oregon; Oakland, Fremont, Watsonville, Tulare and Santa Ana in California; Iowa City; Chicago; Louisville in Kentucky; Jackson City in Mississippi; New Orleans; Lansing in Michigan; Ithaca and New York City in New York; Rockville and Baltimore in Maryland; Alexandria in Virginia; Philadelphia; Newark in New Jersey; East Haven in Connecticut; Northampton, Amherst, Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts; and Providence in Rhode Island.
Some sanctuary cities have policies that restrict the activities of ICE. Courts in those cities help to ensure that those policies are adhered to. They also weigh those policies against federal immigration laws.
City courts can only exercise jurisdiction in their own cities. They don’t have jurisdiction in other cities. On the other hand, federal courts can exercise jurisdiction in other cities.
Some sanctuary cities won’t cooperate with ICE without warrants or court orders. In cities where cooperation with police officers is required, courts issue warrants and court orders. In turn, police officers cooperate with ICE.
In some circumstances, courts have held the activities of ICE to be unconstitutional and thus illegal, especially pertaining to detainers. In 2014, a federal judge in Oregon held that there was violation of a woman’s constitutional rights after she was detained with lack of probable cause after ICE requested local police.
References
CNN. (2016, May 31). A Day With ICE In The So-called “Sanctuary City”. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUXTqyH54ww.
Fernandez M. (2018, March 15). Texas Banned ‘Sanctuary Cities.’ Some Police Departments Didn’t Get The Memo. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/texas-sanctuary-sb4-immigration.html.
Payne, B., Oliver, W., & Marion, N. (2015). Introduction to Criminal Justice: A Balanced Approach.
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