The Truth Behind Sanctuary Cities
by Martin O'Malley
'Over a hundred years ago, the racist anti-immigrant cartoonist, Thomas Nast, did his best to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. The time was the 1880’s. His cartoons portrayed the Irish as monkeys, Catholic Bishops as crocodiles climbing onto America’s shores to eat up white Anglo-Saxon Protestant families, and hordes of lawless immigrants swarming off of boats to take up degenerate lives of crime in America’s cities.
Fast forward to the present.
The Know-Nothing Party has finally taken the White House with Donald Trump’s presidency. What is his top target where cities are concerned? Not infrastructure, bridges, jobs, schools, or restoring dwindling numbers of sworn officers on the streets, rather bringing “sanctuary cities under control” by cutting off any and all federal funding possible. . .
Mayors and their police chiefs rightly said, no more. If for public safety reasons ICE wants a person held and deported, it needs to present the legally required paperwork to local law enforcement in order to do so. This is not an unreasonable request. This also does not create criminal sanctuaries. In fact, in my own State, this sort of warrant based on due process is required by the State Constitution.
Mayors and their Police Chiefs are right to stand up to the immigrant bashing carnival barker, Donald Trump on this one.
It is the one of many important moral fights that will tell whether we have leaned anything from history. Stand up, Mayors. And hold strong.
https://medium.com/@MartinOMalley/the-truth-behind-sanctuary-cities-a40b67f9cd15#.a5nik7vn9