What is a "sanctuary city"?

The term “sanctuary city” refers to U.S. cities that instruct city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens who may be living in their communities. Typically, a sanctuary city will direct its police not to look for violations of immigration law, although some sanctuary cities allow their employees to question a detainee’s immigration status for whose who are booked on a felony charge.

The term “sanctuary” is not entirely accurate in describing these types of cities. Sanctuary cities do not protect foreign-born people from deportation. They merely direct city employees (in particular, the police) to adopt a “don't ask, don’t tell” position regarding suspected illegal immigrants.

A city becomes a sanctuary city either formally or informally. To formally designate itself as a sanctuary city, a city may pass a written policy in the form of a resolution, ordinance, or administrative action. Formal sanctuary cities are the easiest to identify since the actions they take to become a sanctuary city are public record.

An informal sanctuary policy may also create a sanctuary city. Even if a policy does not exist on paper, if may nevertheless be carried out by government workers in the administrative, service or safety sectors. An informal sanctuary policy is more difficult to document, since no formal public record exists. The status of a city as a sanctuary city can be nevertheless detected from the statements and actions of the city’s public officials, especially the mayor of the sanctuary city.

In the summer of 2007, for instance, the Mayor of San Francisco reaffirmed the city’s commitment to be a sanctuary city. Federal agents had raided the Eagle Bag Corporation in Oakland, California earlier in the year, and arrested 13 foreign nationals who were undocumented aliens. In response, Mayor Newson of San Francisco condemned the raid and reaffirmed San Francisco as a city that would not aid federal agents in their round-ups of suspected illegal aliens. The rationale for the city’s policy is that immigration is, by the terms of the U.S. Constitution, a federal function, and not a state or local concern.

San Francisco has called itself a sanctuary city since 1989. Several other Bay Area cities have also either formally or informally declared themselves to be sanctuary cities, including Oakland, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Watsonville. There are dozens of cities across the U.S. that have policies directing local police or officials to stay out of immigration matters.

Opinions regarding sanctuary cities are sharply divided. Some believe the police are shirking their duty to uphold the law when they do not report illegal aliens. For example, one Florida congresswoman introduced a bill last September that would withhold some federal funds to sanctuary cities. Also, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has been criticizing rival Rudolph Giuliani for the former mayor’s sanctuary policy in New York City, while others praise New York’s sanctuary status.

Police who patrol neighborhoods that have a large immigrant population are among those who praise sanctuary cities, believing a sanctuary policy allows members of immigrant communities the ability to talk to the police without being afraid. This leads to a safer community, according to police sources, because predators know when potential victims or witnesses are unlikely to go to the police, and find easy victims in an atmosphere of fear of the police.

In Austin, Texas, for example, immigrants saw the police as immigration enforcement officers and were afraid to talk to them. Like many immigrants, these immigrants typically carried their available cash on their persons because they did no have the documentation necessary to open a banking account. The result was a scourge of violence against immigrants and others in the community. Addressing the problem, the city of Austin offered identification cards for immigrants, enabling them to open bank accounts. Austin city officials also informally spread the word that the police were not interested in immigration status. Witnesses then began to speak up and report crimes to the police, and the incidents of violent crime in Austin dropped.

The sanctuary movement is actually a community-policing strategy, advocates say, as well as a way to help ensure children get vaccines and adults seek healthcare in an environment free of fear.


About the author: Kathleen Lord-Black is a U.S. immigration lawyer.  Her offices are located in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has served as Immigration Consultant for the San Francisco Public Defenders Office, 2005 Chair of the Immigration Section of the Barristers Club of the Bar Association of San Francisco, and former Congressional liaison for U.S. Representative Farr. Ms. Lord-Black is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. Her articles regularly appear in the Bay Area Arabic-language newspaper, Alra’i Alarabi. Ms. Lord-Black can be reached via email at kathleen@kathleenlord.com; and by telephone at (360) 329-2436 (U.S.) and (604) 352-2006 (Canada). www.immigration-etats-unis.com