When a person is arrested, their info is sent to the FBI and ICE. If ICE finds that person is in the country illegally, they issue a request to the arresting municipality to hold the person for up to 48 hours after their criminal case is completed. Since holding a person without a warrant is a violation of the 14th amendment, courts have ruled many times that the federal government cannot make the police hold that person after they would normally have been released, and in many counties, the police will not comply with that order. That’s what a Sanctuary City is. Also, many cities which do not call themselves “sanctuary cities” and which comply with all requests from ICE do NOT ask their officers to perform the duties of immigration officers in addition to providing public safety. Los Angeles is one of them. All these cities still arrest criminals, and charge them with crimes, regardless of status. They just don’t enforce immigration laws. Many police chiefs, officers and public officials say it makes it easier for the police to do their jobs, catch criminals who are a threat to the public, and keep the community safe, because immigrants are more likely to cooperate with police by reporting criminal activity or talking to them as a witness if they aren’t afraid of being deported. Not all cities do this. But In the executive order – for which the administration is already being sued by the City of San Francisco, who says it is unconstitutional – the following appears:
It is the policy of the executive branch to empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law.
Note that this goes beyond making cities hold undocumented immigrants arrested for other crimes, and demands that the local and state police do the job of Federal Immigrations Officers. This action has been called unconstitutional, especially by conservative legal scholars. When the Supreme Court ruled in Printz vs. The United States that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state governments to help enforce federal law because it violates the 10th Amendment, the majority decision was written by conservative hero Antonin Scalia.
But beyond the un-Constitutionality of this order is the fact that it’s an attempt to do the job but hide the cost. ICE’s budget is $6 BILLION a year. They have 20,000 employees. LET THEM ENFORCE IMMIGRATION LAWS. Don’t make our local police do it and at the same time allow Trump to hide the massive cost in their budgets, so you now get less bang for your buck out of your local and state taxes, as well as seeing your federal tax money wasted on deporting people who are mostly harmless. Police budgets are stretched thin as it is. The costs will include training and education of policies as well as enforcement, dragging resources and manpower away from keeping our families safe from criminals regardless of their nationality or immigration status, actual criminals and drug dealers and rapists.
If we keep the cost of deportation transparent and easy to see, it’ll be easier to see whether it’s worth it, right? Let’s take the real cost of keeping them and the real cost of deporting them and put them side by side. We’ll see how much more it costs to kick in doors, detain, and deport than it does to just leave people alone.
I’ve become aware that the GOP voters and pols don’t really care about the Constitution anymore. It’s one of the many long-standing GOP principles abandoned in favor of Trumpism. Soon you will see more of these principles fall by the wayside, much like their objections to executive orders during the Obama administration have turned to giddy jubilation over EOs during the Trump admin. That guy who didn’t care about the deficit during the Bush administration but got really mad about it during the Obama administration will soon go back to not caring about the deficit. Those folks who wanted to rein in government spending will soon be cheering rampant runaway spending, and as long as they’re assured that money is not going to the sick and the poor, they won’t be too concerned about the fact that Trump and his cronies seem to be pocketing quite a lot of it while none makes its way down to the middle class. That Christian who demands nothing less than the full outlawing of abortion now will soon realize that abortion is fine as long as only rich people can get one. And people who worked themselves into an apoplectic fit about having to pay taxes will soon start talking about the patriotism of sacrificing so that we can Make America Great Again.
Please don’t abandon your principles. Take a good look at where your tax money is going. You’ve got the federal government’s hand in one pocket and the state’s in another. Is there room in your pockets for more federal hands? Not in mine. Get your hand out of my pocket, Mr. Trump. Quit trying to grab me by the wallet.
