{"id":13226,"date":"2023-08-07T02:20:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13226"},"modified":"2023-08-07T02:20:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:20:45","slug":"federal-immigration-raids-in-sanctuary-cities-have-conservatives-abandoning-federalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13226","title":{"rendered":"Federal Immigration Raids in ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Have Conservatives Abandoning Federalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Steven Greenhut<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Trump administration is continuing its fight against those \nsanctuary cities in California and elsewhere that refuse to cooperate \nwith federal immigration authorities who seek to deport illegal \nimmigrants. The term is vague, and policies vary, but these localities \nwon\u2019t hand over these immigrants for deportation if they\u2019ve been \ndetained for low-level crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president blasted these places in his State of the Union address,\n and has supported policies from withholding federal funds to allowing \ncrime victims to sue jurisdictions that release illegal immigrants who \nlater commit a crime. The former was halted by the courts and the latter\n is a proposal that is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest: The administration is sending SWAT-like teams of ICE \n(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to cities including San \nFrancisco, Boston and New Orleans to seek out illegal immigrants. Their \nargument is that if cities won\u2019t cooperate with deportations, then the \nfederal government has little choice but to take a heavy-handed \napproach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local officials have pushed back. \u201cWe are not any safer if an entire segment of our population is afraid to report crimes to local law enforcement,\u201d noted Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. As with all of these anti-illegal-immigration policies, the public gets to watch legislatures, bureaucrats and courts sort through this disputatious mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Republican friends mostly want the feds to operate freely within \nthe states, which turns a classic conservative principle on its head. \nThe right traditionally favored states\u2019 rights, as embodied in the \nConstitution\u2019s 10th amendment: \u201cThe powers not delegated to the United \nStates by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are \nreserved to the States respectively, or to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I know immigration law is a federal prerogative, but it\u2019s more \ncomplicated than it seems. States have every right to place limits on \nthe behavior of authorities under their command.  California, for \ninstance, has passed three major \u2014 and constitutionally acceptable \u2014 \nlaws that restrict local governments and private employers from \ncooperating with ICE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, conservatives believe in states\u2019 rights, except when they\n don\u2019t. That\u2019s the mirror image of liberals, who oppose states\u2019 rights, \nexcept when they do. Please don\u2019t tell me that states don\u2019t have rights.\n Of course, they don\u2019t. They have powers. But \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d is \nshorthand for federalism \u2014 a founding principle that protects our \nfreedom by dividing government authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t want a dictator or a national government that simply imposes\n its will on us. We\u2019re supposed to be a self-governing people, who elect\n our own representatives. They govern \u2014 for good or ill, and mostly for \nill in California \u2014 and within their lanes of authority. As a rule of \nthumb, states may govern as they choose unless they choose to intrude on\n our constitutional rights by, say, banning guns, restricting free \nspeech or, as the Southern states had done, depriving an entire group of\n its civil rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, California and its cities have every reason to limit the ability of the feds to round up people who are living (even illegally) within our state\u2019s boundaries. I like the concept of sanctuary cities, for reasons that the L.A. sheriff noted in his statement, even if I think some cities, such as San Francisco, go too far and put ideology ahead of public safety. But, as a matter of principle, it\u2019s a good thing \u2014 and a longstanding American tradition \u2014 when states resist federal intrusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also believe ICE has the right to conduct its latest deployment \nunder the doctrine of federalism. Nevertheless, it\u2019s a wrongheaded \npolicy that undermines other American notions of liberty. In a free \nsociety, people shouldn\u2019t have to show their papers, submit to searches \nwithout a warrant or fear having SWAT teams conduct no-knock raids. I\u2019m \nmuch less worried about the presence of illegal immigrants than the \npresence of virtual standing armies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis War on Immigration isn\u2019t just swallowing up the liberties of immigrants,\u201d wrote Shikha Dalmia in a 2018 Reason article, \u201cbut also of \u2026 red-blooded Americans. Arizona \u2026 has created criminal squads to raid employers suspected of having undocumented workers in their employ.\u201d She noted that \u201cborder-town residents are forced to go through Border Patrol checkpoints just to take their kids to the dentist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIn fact, the Associated Press reported on Thursday that \u201cU.S. \nimmigration agents arrested two people at a Northern California \ncourthouse, including a man detained in a hallway on his way to a \nhearing, flouting a new state law requiring a judicial warrant to make \nimmigration arrests inside such facilities.\u201d That\u2019s outrageous \u2014 and \ndrew a welcome rebuke from the district attorney.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m tired of the surveillance cameras, militarized police forces, checkpoints and all the other police-state nonsense that forces us to behave like sheep rather than free citizens. I\u2019d love to live in a city that provided real sanctuary from endless government intrusions, whether they are imposed by local, state or federal governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This column was first published<\/a> in the Orange County Register.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Steven Greenhut The Trump administration is continuing its fight against those sanctuary cities in California and elsewhere that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities who seek to deport illegal immigrants. The term is […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[83,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-13226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-immigration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13227,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13226\/revisions\/13227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}