As part of its aggressive efforts to deploy sweeping immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has taken aim at so-called "sanctuary" policies, suing and threatening to cut off funding to cities and other jurisdictions that it claims are refusing to cooperate with federal agencies. But legal advocates and other critics of the administration say it is an unlawful effort to commandeer local law enforcement, and have launched legal challenges.
Maine Public's Nicole Ogrysko spoke with fellow reporter Ari Snider to help explain this politically-charged term, and what it could mean locally.
Nicole Ogrysko: Let's start with the basics. What is a sanctuary city?
Ari Snider: So it actually gets complicated right off the bat, because there's no set legal definition for a sanctuary policy. Molly Curren Rowles, executive director of the ACLU of Maine, said politically it's come to refer to a jurisdiction that in some way limits how local law enforcement ask about immigration status or cooperate proactively with federal immigration enforcement.
"It's really not a legal category, but it's something that reflects individual municipalities decision not to allocate their resources to effectuating federal legal work that's being done to focus on immigration," she said.
Take Illinois, for example. The Justice Department is suing the state — and the city of Chicago — saying that both state and local policy impede immigration enforcement. Illinois has a law that, among other things, prohibits state and local law enforcement from stopping, arresting, or detaining someone based solely on immigration status. It also prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with immigration detainers. Those are requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, asking local law enforcement agencies to continue holding someone ICE believes could be subject to deportation. But even ICE's own website says a detainer is only a request, not an obligation.
The justification for so-called sanctuary policies tends to be twofold. One, to avoid spending local resources enforcing federal immigration policy. And two, in places with large immigrant communities, not wanting to scare people away from reporting crimes out of fear they'd be deported.
But as Curren Rowles points out, federal immigration law still applies across the country, and these policies do not provide any specific protections against deportation.
Are there any places in Maine that fit this definition of a sanctuary city?
That's hard to answer because, again, there's no universal definition. And since it's such a politically-charged term, it can get thrown around in ways that don't reflect actual policy.
Some towns have taken up non-binding resolutions to declare themselves sanctuary communities, but those are more expressions of values as opposed to enforceable policy.
On the other hand, a hardline anti-immigration group lobbed the term at Hancock and Cumberland Counties as part of a form letter to hundreds of jurisdictions across the country, apparently based on an ICE report about how county jails handle federal immigration detainers. But an official at the Hancock County Jail told me they don't have any issues working with federal agencies. Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said he doesn't honor detainers, but emphasized that those are nonbinding documents to begin with. The Cumberland County Jail does hold people who have already been arrested by ICE.
The city of Portland has an ordinance directing staff and police officers not to ask about someone's immigration status in most situations, unless required by law or court order.
Mayor Mark Dion, who has a background in law enforcement in the Portland Police Department and as Cumberland County Sheriff, said the intention is to make clear that local law enforcement is there to focus on local issues.
"We're not successful unless people are willing to speak with us about criminal activity," he said. "And therefore ordinances such as this reinforce the idea that we're not a stand-in for immigration authorities, that we're actually there to manage their public safety."
Dion said Portland has never declared itself a sanctuary city. And city code is clear that nothing in the ordinance prohibits staff and police officers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities as required by law.
So even without a universal definition of what qualifies as a sanctuary policy, the Trump administration has doubled down on its efforts to punish jurisdictions it views as not cooperating on immigration enforcement. What exactly are they doing, and what's at stake in these legal battles?
In addition to suing Chicago and the state of Illinois, the Justice Department said it will freeze funding to jurisdictions that it claims are interfering with federal immigration enforcement. A number of cities and counties are countersuing.
Lisa Parisio, with the Portland-based Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, said what's at stake here is, fundamentally, local versus federal control.
"In order for the Trump administration to carry out its mass enforcement agenda, which is really targeting, you know, anyone in the United States who is undocumented, they need to commandeer these state and local resources in order to carry out their agenda," she said. "So this is a really big part of of their tactics right now."
Similar legal fights played out during the first Trump administration. The ACLU of Maine said the courts generally agreed that these sanctuary policies were legal. But of course we're seeing the administration take a more aggressive approach on a number of fronts this time, and question the authority of the courts. So as these sanctuary cases are re-litigated, it'll be worth watching how the courts rule, but also if those rulings are respected.
