Sanctuary Status Based On False Premise    -   October 23, 2021

Non-citizens More Likely Than Citizens To Report Serious Crimes!

Fifty-nine percent of non-citizens responding to the Census Bureau’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) between 2017 and 2019 reported the serious violent crimes they experienced to local law enforcement, compared to 49 percent of citizens.

Sanctuary cities in America refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.  Leaders of these cities have long justified this position as reducing fear of deportation among persons here illegally so that they will be more willing to report crimes.  The recently announced study would seem to belie that rationale.


The NCVS has been run for decades, but prior to 2017 it didn’t ask respondents whether they were citizens.  This makes the present data, analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), “the first truly representative sample of actual victims … it is basically the gold standard for measuring victimizations,” says CIS Director of Research Steven Camarota.


Cooperation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and local law enforcement often looks like this: local officials notify ICE when they arrest and charge an illegal alien with a crime; ICE issues a “detainer” that requests local authorities (police, courts, etc.) to hold that person until an ICE agent can take him or her into custody; the local authorities honor the detainer request.  By contrast, sanctuary-city officials do not notify ICE and do not honor ICE detainers; they release such persons back into the general population, thus frustrating immigration law enforcement and violating their oaths of office … and decreasing the safety of all their citizens.


Cooperation can be even more formal.  Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes the Secretary of DHS to enter into written agreements with state or local law enforcement agencies whereby state and local law enforcement officers are trained by the federal government in immigration law enforcement and then are deputized to act as immigration agents.  Many such agreements were put into practice, but over recent years many localities have canceled or forbidden 287(g) participation within their jurisdictions.


The NVCS shows that cities and similar entities can maintain a status of welcoming for all, citizens and non-citizens, without subjecting them to the increased danger that non-cooperation brings.  Legal immigrants and illegal aliens seem to realize this.  When will elected officials and politicians of “Sanctuary” entities wake up?


(For more, preview Immigration here.)




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