Jim Jordan wants to eliminate cities’ sanctuary status for supporting immigrants
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has suggested eliminating sanctuary cities through legislation, justifying his proposition by claiming that officials in those sanctuary cities are refusing to turn illegal immigrants over to federal authorities.
He also claimed that this is the reason why there was such a clash between the state and federal authorities over immigration, as well as widespread protests all around Minneapolis and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Sanctuary cities are jurisdictions that have adopted policies limiting their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, including ICE, by either not cooperating with or preventing the officials from doing their job. Policies differ widely by jurisdiction, with some cities not cooperating with ICE completely and some cooperating only when an immigrant commits a serious crime.
Supporters of sanctuary cities argue that these policies encourage immigrant communities to report crimes and cooperate with police by eliminating the fear of being deported. On the other hand, critics of sanctuary cities say that these laws protect people who came to the United States illegally, undermine immigration enforcement, and incentivize illegal immigration in the future.
Jordan, a Republican, told Cleveland.com in an interview that his committee plans to introduce legislation later this month to end sanctuary cities, adding that the bill’s text is nearly complete.
“Do you look at funding? Do you look at some kind of, some kind of penalty?” he told the publication. “We’re structuring that bill, but we’re looking to do a markup in two weeks on that issue.”
None of Ohio’s cities is on the Department of Justice’s official list of sanctuary jurisdictions, even though the Center for Immigration Studies lists Ohio’s Franklin, Lorain, Hamilton, and Mahoning counties as “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the sanctuary cities oppose the federal immigration law enforcement “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.”
Jordan told Cleveland.com that the officials in those sanctuary cities rebel against the federal government by not cooperating with ICE agents.
“These sanctuary jurisdictions just give federal law enforcement the finger and say, ‘No, we’re going to release them to the streets,’” he told the publication.
Jordan then said that this kind of behavior is the reason why killings of Americans, like Good and Pretti, happen in the first place.
“And that is what creates this environment that led to the tragic situations in Minneapolis,” he said. “That makes no sense.”
