Rep. Greg Landsman in 2017: Sanctuary city status for Cincinnati ‘absolutely’ worth pursuing

A newly resurfaced clip shows Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman supporting sanctuary-city policies for Cincinnati, and critics say it was just the start of his anti-police posture.

In an interview with Together We Will – Cincinnati / Southwest Ohio during his 2017 campaign for Cincinnati City Council, an interviewer asked Landsman whether he supported keeping Cincinnati a sanctuary city.

“Yeah, I would,” Landsman responded.

“…We want to see Cincinnati grow,” the now-congressman added. “We want people to live here and want to live here and raise a family here, and that requires, among other things, being a welcoming place — a place where people say, ‘Okay, I belong here,’ and so I absolutely think it’s something we should continue … to pursue.”

City officials in early 2017 voted to declare Cincinnati a “sanctuary city.”

Landsman was elected to the Cincinnati City Council in November 2017 and has held his current seat representing Ohio’s First Congressional District since 2023. He faces Cincinnati native Eric Conroy, an Air Force veteran and former Central Intelligence Agency agent endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Critics point to Landsman’s support for the elimination of cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanors, noting that in 2020 he also signed on to a measure calling for its elimination and gave support to pressuring Hamilton County officials to do the same. Landsman also supported a measure that would allow offenders to receive citations requiring them to appear in court rather than being arrested and proposed reallocating $200,000 from Cincinnati’s police budget amid the defund-the-police movement in 2020.

At a Juneteenth rally in 2020, Landsman likened modern policing and incarceration to slavery and Jim Crow, describing the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death as part of the “moment of abolition of slavery.”

Critics say Landsman’s positions haven’t changed in Congress.

They argue that he has continued to side with immigration enforcement opponents, pointing to his blocking funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which meant frontline security workers, such as TSA agents and members of the Coast Guard, worked without pay. Democrats, including Landsman, also voted against a measure to “fully fund” Border Patrol and ICE operations.

“If Greg Landsman had it his way, Cincinnati would be overrun with violent criminal illegal aliens looking to terrorize and destroy Ohioans’ livelihoods,” RNC Spokesman Hunter Lovell said in a statement. “Landsman has repeatedly put his soft-on-crime, anti-law enforcement record ahead of keeping Ohio families safe. Cincinnati should never be a sanctuary for criminal illegal aliens.”