Federal authorities may pressure local officials to detain immigrants in jail for extra time, at our local expense, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport them. However, courts across the country have that found these detentions or “holds” for ICE are unconstitutionaland violate basic rights. U.S. citizens have also been held for extra time for ICE. Sanctuary policies limit these unconstitutional human rights abuses and keep families together by making more transparent, further constraining, or prohibiting local officials' participation in federal immigration enforcement activities to the extent allowed under the U.S. Constitution.
Why are sanctuary policies beneficial?
Sanctuary policies have a powerful track record of keeping families together and making us all safer. Sanctuary policies:
Strengthen public safety: Residents' trust in law enforcement erodes when local officials work with ICE. Sanctuary policies protect residents' trust in government and help ensure that victims and witnesses, including survivors of domestic violence, can come forward to get the help they need without fear of deportation. In addition, study after study has confirmed the public safety benefits of sanctuary policies. Sanctuary policies reduce family separation without increasing crime, and researchers have found that property and violent crime rates actually decreasedin counties after implementing policies prohibiting county cooperation with ICE. Before we had sanctuary policies in place in California, we saw domestic violence survivors, tamale vendors, and even a mother whose dogs were barking too loudly all turned over to ICE by local law enforcement.
Protect everyone's right to due process: Sanctuary policies help strengthen due process protections for everyone, including immigrants, by further limiting or prohibiting law enforcement agencies from holding someone in detainment without probable cause (holding someone who isn't suspected of a crime) beyond the period of confinement authorized by local law.
Keep families and communities together: One in every four Californians is an immigrant, and almost half of California children have at least one immigrant parent. Over a million California children have at least one undocumented parent. People from all over the globe call California home and enrich our social and cultural fabric. Sanctuary policies help ensure that immigrant parents are not separated from their children and that neighborhoods are not destabilized by local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Promote economic security and opportunity: In the early 2010s, Californians spent $65 million a year detaining immigrants in local jails for ICE. In 2018 and 2019, transfers from local law enforcement to ICE cost California taxpayers over $7 million. Sanctuary policies ensure our local tax dollars are used to promote safety for all Californians and address urgent local priorities, not wastefully fund mass deportations of neighbors, family members, and friends. In addition, mass deportations economically destabilize families, communities, and our society as a whole. A recent analysis concluded that for each half million immigrants deported, the US-born population would actually lose 44,000 jobs.
Guadalupe Plascencia, a long-time U.S. citizen and grandmother, was arrested in early 2017 due to a misunderstanding and was detained by ICE after local law enforcement notified federal immigration agents about her release date. A San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy asked Guadalupe to sign documents acknowledging that federal immigration agents had asked about her. She didn't understand why immigration agents would be looking for her. Thinking this mix-up would be cleared up, she did as she was told. But when she was released from jail the next day, immigration agents were waiting for her. They handcuffed Guadalupe, detained her, and didn't release her until her daughter presented her passport to immigration authorities, even though Guadalupe tried repeatedly to explain that she was a U.S. citizen. This type of unjust “mix-up” is exactly what advocates have long warned would happen when the federal government conscripts local police into participating in mass deportation. If SB 54 had been in place at the time, immigration agents would not have been notified about Guadalupe's release date, and she would not have had to endure inhumane immigrant detention.
During the three-year fight to pass the TRUST Act (AB 4), which limits local law enforcement holds for ICE, many courageous undocumented Californians facing deportation spoke out. This includes:
