SAFE CITIES? BLOG # 199, SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

THE MESSAGE:

SANCTUARY CITIES:
The term Sanctuary City is given to cities in the United States or Canada that have policies that effectively shelter illegal immigrants. These practices can be by law (de jure) or they can be by habit (de facto). More than 200 cities, counties, and states across the United States are considered sanctuaries.

On July 1, 2015, as the rest of the country was preparing for a long holiday weekend, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was gunned down while going for a walk with her dad.

UNBELIEVABLE!

“It was an accident,” the gunman says. “I found the gun.” The gunman, an illegal alien with seven felony convictions, has already been deported from America five times. Undeterred, he kept returning. It’s not hard to see why. During a recent arrest, just two months prior to shooting and killing Kate, Francisco Sanchez was in federal custody. 

San Francisco authorities asked the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hand Sanchez over to them to face drug charges. ICE did just that, on the condition that if they let Sanchez go, local authorities would hand him back over to ICE.

Local authorities, however, didn’t hand him over. As a so-called “sanctuary city,” Sanchez, who was on probation and in the country illegally, was set free. “Federal detention orders are not a legal basis to hold someone,” according to city officials. 

DONALD TRUMP MAKES HAY

He rails against  the current President’s inability or unwillingness to secure the U.S. borders. They continue the fight to implement policies aimed at reducing violence and the flow of illegal narcotics, firearms, people, and money across the borders. However, it is apparent that the Latino vote weighs heavily on the current administration's lack of effectiveness.

PRESENTLY IN THE U.S. THERE ARE THREE PROPOSED IMMIGRATION BILLS DESIGNED TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 

• The first, H.R. 3011, 'Kate’s Law', would create a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for any illegal alien reentering the country after being deported. 
• The second, H.R. 3009, "Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities', restricts federal funding to sanctuary cities so that the American people are not subsidizing local law enforcement agencies that refuse to comply with federal law. 
• The third, H.R. 399, 'Secure Our Borders First Act', requires that the Secretary of Homeland Security gain, and maintain, operational control of the international borders of the United States.

A law professor at Texas A&M University who specializes in immigration law, Huyen Pham, believes that of the three proposals it would seem the most likely and effective approach to eliminating the sanctuary city would be cutting off federal funds to cities that won't help with immigration enforcement.

HERE IS A MAP OF THE PROBLEM CITIES

THE ISSUE IN MORE DETAIL:

SANCTUARY CITIES protect criminal aliens from deportation by refusing to comply with ICE detainers or otherwise impede open communication and information exchanges between their employees or officers and federal immigration agents. These state and local jurisdictions have policies, laws, executive orders, or regulations to this effect. These sanctuary policies obstruct federal law authorizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to administratively deport illegal aliens without seeking criminal warrants or convictions from federal, state, or local courts. Although federal regulations plainly require cooperation, the federal government has never sued nor sanctioned a sanctuary jurisdiction, nor denied federal funds. In contrast, the Obama administration has made it difficult for the states and localities which choose to aid in enforcing immigration laws, in some cases going so far as to sue to have such assistance prohibited. A memorandum, signed by the Homeland Security Secretary, and produced by  the administration reversed longstanding policies by directing ICE agents not to issue detainers except in rare circumstances, and explicitly allowing sanctuaries to ignore ICE efforts to take custody of deportable criminal aliens.

San Francisco claims to have these policies in order to build trust between immigrant communities and local police and goes on to argue, "If immigrants, including millions of undocumented ones, see local police officers as a tool for deportation, they will not report crimes or come forward as witnesses, even when they are victims, and public safely will suffer."

In that context, there's a certain logic to the "sanctuary" idea, but not when carried to extremes. Sanctuary policies set by cities, counties and states differ from place to place, but San Francisco's, in the case of Kate Steinle, is an affront to common sense. Protecting a hard-working undocumented immigrant charged with a misdemeanour is probably a fair and compassionate concept.  Putting a long-term felon and serial illegal entrant on the street is far from ensuring public safety.

THE QUESTION"

Why do some states in the U.S look the other way in allowing non-citizens to vote?

THE QUOTE:

"Nobody Wants to Talk About' Immigration and Crime."-Donald Trump




























THE LEMON:

TO-Paul Bedford, former chief planner of Toronto

FOR SAYING,
“If the decision ultimately of the council is to support the hybrid I think frankly it’ll be a major step backwards and you’re going to miss a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I’ll be very frank, we’ll be the laughingstock of the world.”
THE CLIP: