Sanctuary cities need to stand together against Trump’s temper tantrum

On April 28, the president issued an executive order titled “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens.” The order on its face is a screed against so-called sanctuary cities. It directs the attorney general to compile a list of sanctuary jurisdictions around the U.S. and, among other things, threatens to withhold federal funding from them. To me, an attorney in a city with a long, proud history of welcoming and protecting people from all over the world, the executive order reads like a temper tantrum. 

There isn’t a universal definition for a sanctuary city. The term refers to a non-federal jurisdiction — it could be a state, a county, or a city or town — that has laws in place that limit its government’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Communities choose these policies for a variety of reasons: to build trust and cooperation between officials and non-citizens; to maintain discretion of how to allocate limited law enforcement resources for public safety; and because they don’t want to be in the business of hunting down their neighbors for deportation.

Trump administration officials assert that sanctuary policies make our communities less safe. They point to highly publicized murders of American citizens at the hands of non-citizens and they allege the presence of transnational criminal organizations and terrorists in our communities. But research bears out that places with sanctuary policies have lower crime rates than places without them. Sanctuary policies encourage participation in community policing by all members of the community and engagement with social services and community and economic development initiatives that mitigate poverty.

The most recent executive order asserts that sanctuary policies are  “lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States.” The Trump administration may feel that way — so many of its recent executive orders are more about feelings than what is actually legal — but courts have consistently held otherwise. 

Sanctuary policies do not explicitly interfere with immigration enforcement. They do not impede the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to arrest, detain and deport non-citizens and they do not shield or harbor those individuals from law enforcement. Refusing to cooperate within this legal framework does not prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agencies from doing their job; it just says: We’re not going to use our resources to do this job for you. 

This distinction is important because it is constitutionally protected. The 10th amendment has what’s called the “anti-commandeering” doctrine. What that means is that the federal government cannot conscript states and local governments to enforce federal laws. Courts have long held that sanctuary policies are protected by the 10th amendment. 

This is why the Trump administration is attempting to use withholding of federal funds to compel jurisdictions with sanctuary policies to comply and cooperate. It’s not unlike the threats to withhold federal funding from universities who are unwilling to bend the knee to the administration. But, with respect to sanctuary cities, this issue was litigated during the first Trump administration and a federal judge ruled against withholding funds saying: “Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.” That same judge granted an injunction on April 24 against the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold funds from sanctuary cities.  

This explains the tantrum. Kinder people can call it political theater but it is just a tantrum. We are starting to see a pattern of the president lashing out at people, companies, universities, states, or even countries that don’t immediately bend the knee to his demands. Mass deportation is a marquis issue for the second Trump administration and whether threatening sanctuary jurisdictions, denying due process or ignoring court orders, officials are having to result in increasingly illegal strategies to implement it. As desperation grows, the administration is escalating baseless propaganda about non-citizens being heinous criminals or terrorists. Sanctuary jurisdictions have a legally protected right to stand up and say, ‘we don’t buy it.’ Sanctuary jurisdictions know what healthy and safe communities look like, which is why voters support the policies. 

There are challenges ahead for our leaders. In our sanctuary communities, we need to lean into the instincts that told us we will never be safer by throwing our neighbors under the bus and stand up with other cities against these threats. We know we are always stronger together, that’s why we passed sanctuary policies in the first place. And the law is on our side. We refuse to cooperate with the federal government’s orders to help detain and deport our neighbors and we must also refuse to back down as the threats escalate — no matter how angry it makes our tantrum-throwing president.