The Trump administration’s recent threat to defund so-called sanctuary jurisdictions was the focal point of a Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
At a House Judiciary Committee meeting on immigration and border security, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County, Mass., said ending sanctuary cities is imperative to stopping illegal immigration.
“Issue arrest warrants and charge these officials who pledge to violate federal law by harboring and concealing illegals. Sanctuary cities will start to fade if their leaders start running into legal trouble,” Hodgson said in his prepared remarks.
He also called illegal immigration “the most dangerous issue facing legal residents of the United States.”
Meanwhile, ranking member Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chastised Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who on Monday escalated threats against sanctuary cities by saying the Justice Department will soon cut their funding.
“The current administrations continues to vilify immigrants and attack the communities that have decided not to constrict their law enforcement into a mass deportation force,” Conyers said, citing reports that sanctuary cities are “actually safer and more prosperous” than those that are not.
However, the head of a conservative non-profit immigration organization labeled sanctuary cities as far more dangerous.
Those jurisdictions with sanctuary policies have “resulted in the release of hundreds of deportable criminal aliens per week since 2014, according to ICE records I obtained through a FOIA request,” Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies told the panel.
“Most of the offenders” released in sanctuary cities “had prior arrests, and one-fourth were already felons at the time of release,” Vaughn explained.
“Many of these offenders committed new crimes soon after their release; during one brief time period studied, nearly one-fourth were arrested again for a criminal offense within eight months of their release,” she revealed.
State lawmakers have been looking to penalize local governments adopting sanctuary policies. There are approximately 300 in the country.
However, Archi Pyati of the Tahirih Justice Center told the panel that sanctuary jurisdictions are actually more safe, explaining that “on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in so-called ‘sanctuary’ counties than there are in non-sanctuary counties.”
Pyati also told the panel that because of this report, major policing groups including the Major Cities Chiefs Association, Major County Sheriffs Association, International Association of Chiefs of Police and National Fraternal Order of Police have opposed efforts to defund the cities.
The MCCA, she said, issued a statement in response to the Trump administration’s executive moving to defund sanctuary cities “that aim to build trusting and supportive relations with immigrant communities should not be punished because this is essential to reducing crime and helping victims.”
