Sanctuary cities, counties, and states and communities calling for their police force to be defunded are witnessing their dreams come true. And those pursuits are coming back to bite them in the butt.
Twelve states and 188 cities and counties have declared themselves a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, these jurisdictions “have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.”
In other words, federal law does not apply in these jurisdictions (see my column from last week). For those who understand the U.S. Constitution, the Supremacy Clause means that federal law supersedes conflicting state and city laws.
Sanctuary cities in the U.S. have been around since 1971, when Berkeley, Calif., became the first city to claim this status. It entered a part of the national discussion during the 2016 presidential campaign after an undocumented immigrant shot and killed Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco (a sanctuary city). Presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that sanctuary cities were the cause of more crime and should be stopped.
Democrat-controlled communities and states fought back.
After Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he has essentially turned the U.S. into a sanctuary country by opening the border with Mexico and handcuffing ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from enforcing immigration laws.
Recently in the news, sanctuary states and cities like Massachusetts and New York are declaring emergencies and begging the federal government for billions of dollars to combat the surge in illegal immigrants.
In April, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the migrant crisis under the Biden Administration has “destroyed” his city.
I’m sorry, as a sanctuary city, they asked for this. Let them take care of the problem themselves.
A recent study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform concludes that the cost to taxpayers (that’s you and me) for services and benefits to illegal immigrants has reached $151 billion annually. That’s $462 a year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. Thank you, Joe Biden.
Another event we can thank the Democrat party for is the ‘defund the police’ movement. This was pushed by the progressive wing of the Democrat party after a policeman killed George Floyd in May 2020.
Those cities who carried out this insane plan are now paying the piper.
One of the major cities that pushed to defund its police was Portland, Ore. In 2019, Portland experienced 15 years of growth. That has changed.
After defund the police, Multnomah County (where Portland is located) lost over $1 billion in income between 2020 and 2021 because residents left. Feeling unsafe, they fled increases in crime and homelessness.
The Seattle Times recently reported that a “national survey shows that, among the largest U.S. metro areas, Seattle had the highest percentage of residents who felt pressure to move because their neighborhood seemed unsafe.” The total was over 200,000 people or 7.2 percent of the cities’ population.
Seattle voted to cut spending for their police department in Aug. 2020 by $3 million and reduce their police force by 100.
San Francisco also has a crime problem. Earlier this month a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services advised workers to work from home due to “conditions” — read crime — around the 18-story federal building in downtown San Francisco.
The city by the bay is trying to reverse course after cutting $120 million from law enforcement in 2020.
Austin, Texas cut its police budget by $150 million in 2020. They currently have 1,475 officers on their police force. Thomas Villarreal, president of the Austin Police Association, says they need 2,000. In the year to date numbers through July, compared to 2020, auto theft is up 77 percent in Austin, murder 30 percent and aggravated assault 18 percent.
On Foxnews.com Villarreal said, “I’ve got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls.”
Less police equals more crime every time it’s tried.
