Crime, Immigration

Sanctuary Is Not The Same As Amnesty

The U.S. doesn't give away the shop to criminal aliens -- we never have.

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statue of liberty immigrants immigrationMy ancestors came to this country from Sicily in the early 1900s. My grandmother arrived in Ellis Island but was turned back due to a medical issue — she had pinkeye. Half of her family was admitted. She had to return to Sicily with her mother.

Several years later, mother and daughter attempted to enter the U.S. again — this time illegally, through the border with Canada. They made it. My grandmother was in her teens. She became an expert seamstress, designing patterns and sewing clothes for the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy. She had children, who had children, who had children, all of whose lives enriched this country. Some fought in the military, including my father in World War II; some joined the military decades later. The U.S. probably would not have been substantially altered had my grandmother been deported at the border and none of us born, but it’s hard to say.

Like the butterfly effect, which holds that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings on this continent can lead to a hurricane on the other side of the world, small changes can have big effects both in the present and the future. (If you want to read a great piece on this, check out Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Sound of Thunder.)

So what will Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant executive order bring? It’s based largely on the theory that undocumented aliens are harmful: they take jobs away from U.S. citizens; they are largely criminal; and they are protected in “sanctuary” communities, instead of deported, when they commit crime. I’m not an economist, so I cannot speak to the first issue, but I can address the latter two.

First, the myth that aliens commit crime. All people commit crime — undocumented aliens no more than honest-to-goodness citizens. Most people caught in the web of deportation due to criminal acts are arrested for incidental violations — driving without a license, vending without a license, or re-entering the country after having already been deported. According to a recent New York Times article, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.

Next, sanctuary communities do not protect people from being deported per se — they merely don’t automatically report someone’s status to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at the point of arrest.

Le’s parse this out. We live in a country with state and federal law enforcement agents. The state actors make arrests pertaining to misdeeds against the law of that particular state. The federal actors enforce national laws and all laws relating to immigration.

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State police shouldn’t care if the person they arrest is an undocumented alien or a U.S. citizen. If he’s suspected of committing a crime against the state, he’ll be arrested and processed either way. It’s no bigger or smaller of a crime if he’s a citizen or an alien.

In so-called “sanctuary” areas, state and city law enforcement agree not to automatically inform ICE when they arrest someone. It doesn’t involve them, and in fact can be bad for the people they protect.

Here’s an example. An undocumented alien or visa overstay from, let’s say, Honduras, gets stopped by police for driving with a broken tail-light. He may be the father of U.S. children, earning money to support his family, working in construction, the food business, or gardening. To bring him to ICE’s attention for a broken tail-light takes him out of the community to which he’s contributed for years, breaks up his family, and costs the government money. First, he’d be incarcerated for as long as it takes to see an immigration judge at a cost to the local county, then he’d be brought back to court a half-dozen times before he is either deported or wins relief from deportation. Of course, his family would be left without financial support, which could potentially lead to them losing their home, and would cause his U.S. children left behind and undocumented spouse tremendous anxiety. All because of a broken tail-light.

Then, let’s say, the undocumented spouse is attacked by robbers and beaten. What trust would she have in police? Why wouldn’t she believe that that if she came forward to report the crime, she, too, would be ratted out to ICE?

Police in many sanctuary areas fear this backlash. In the cost-benefit analysis, they figure that if we cooperate with ICE from the get-go, we lose the cooperation of the citizenry. Many sanctuary places, 364 counties and 39 cities in the U.S., have determined this is too high a price to pay. But this doesn’t mean that criminal aliens — people actually convicted of crime — escape ICE attention and are somehow just let go.

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Every alien I’ve represented who was convicted of a crime and sent to state or federal prison has come to the attention of ICE and was put into deportation proceedings upon the completion of his jail sentence. It’s simply a myth that this doesn’t happen.

With the sharing of data across state and federal lines, once an alien is identified and his info (post-conviction) is shared with ICE, a warrant is immediately lodged for his detention before he gets out of jail. Right from the doors of Attica, or Five-Points Correctional, or any federal penitentiary, he will be apprehended by ICE and placed into immigration detention until his removal proceedings have concluded. Most of these people never get out of jail again (until they’re deported) because the scope of crimes for which no bail is allowed is huge. Any offenses categorized as aggravated felonies (violent crime, domestic violence, drug sales, etc.) or two lesser crimes of “moral turpitude” make the person ineligible for bond.

The U.S. doesn’t give away the shop to criminal aliens — we never have. The idea that sanctuary areas are harboring criminals and “not cooperating” with ICE (as has been reported) is just wrong. They cooperate with ICE, just not until the person is convicted, as opposed to merely arrested.

Punishing these areas by taking away their federal funding, as President Trump has threatened, will only make these towns and cities less safe, not more.

Earlier: When Immigration Enforcement Comes Knocking
Court Hits Pause On Muslim Ban, But Nation Remains On A Precipice
Trump’s ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Order Violates The Republican Parts Of The Constitution Too

Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band, and dancing flamenco. She can be reached by email at [email protected] or tonimessinalaw.com, and you can also follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

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