Sanctuary cities are on the rise, as the number of jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security officials has risen to 340, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
About 1,000 criminal immigrants per month benefit from the sanctuary cities, which as a matter of policy ignore Immigrations and Customs Enforcement “detainers” notifying local-law enforcement agencies that an immigrant in their custody is slated for deportation.
“A DHS spokesperson confirmed to me on October 5, 2015, that roughly 340 jurisdictions had adopted non-cooperation policies, but that some of those jurisdictions had recently revised their sanctuary policies to allow at least some cooperation with ICE,” writes one of the report’s authors. “The spokesperson declined to provide either a list of the 340 total non-cooperative jurisdictions or a list of the ones that had allegedly improved their policies.”
#share#President Obama’s Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), developed under the auspices of his recent executive orders on immigration, is leading to the proliferation of sanctuary cities, according to CIS’s study. “PEP explicitly allows jurisdictions to obstruct immigration enforcement by ignoring detainers or barring ICE access to jails,” the report says. “Under PEP, immigration officers also issue ‘requests for notification’ asking local authorities to tell them when a criminal alien in their custody will be released so ICE can attempt to take custody for deportation. Local agencies are free to ignore these notifications, or to choose which criminal aliens will be held for ICE.”
CIS says that 9,295 people were released over the objections of ICE between January 1 and September 30 of 2014. “More than 600 people were released at least twice,” the report says. “ICE was not able to re-apprehend most of the offenders released by the sanctuaries. As of last year, 6,460 (69 percent) were still at large. Of those still at large, 1,377 (20 percent) had another criminal arrest following the one that resulted in the ICE detainer.”
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.