It turns out that the City of San Francisco’s Sanctuary ordinance did not mandate the cover up for immigrant drug dealers that came to light in the past week, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, “There’s a real debate going on nationally in police circles, but in almost every large city I know of, police departments have the same attitude: We have to work with these communities; we can’t have them viewing the police as the enemy because then you get this ‘Don’t snitch’ policy.”
A blog called DMI explained sanctuary laws thusly:
“The basic idea is that if undocumented immigrants feel scared to call the police because they are worried that doing so will lead to deportation, then we are all less safe. Let’s think about this. If I am the undocumented mother of two citizen children who are being beaten by their U.S. citizen father, am I likely to call the police if they are, in turn, likely to report my to immigration authorities? Of course not. Similarly, undocumented people are not likely to report dangerous working conditions, health and safety violations at the restaurants where they work, cooperate with police on everyday investigations, or seek important government benefits, like WIC or Medicaid, for their citizen children.”
I hope that the disaster that San Francisco made of their sanctuary ordinance won’t hurt other such efforts. And I continue to wonder how a city like Santa Ana, with an all-Latino City Council and Mayor and only one Republican Council Member (Carlos Bustamante) won’t go near this issue. At the very least they ought to hold a public hearing about this so we can all learn more about sanctuary laws.
The fact is, over 80 U.S. cities or states have sanctuary laws in place, including:
California sanctuaries
Berkeley
East Palo Alto
Fresno
Garden Grove (Orange County)
Los Angeles
Oakland
Richmond
San Diego
San Francisco
San Jose
San Rafael
Santa Cruz
Watsonville
Sonoma County
U.S. sanctuary cities (A partial list)
Anchorage, Alaska
Hartford, Conn.
Chicago
Portland, Maine
Baltimore
Boston
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Detroit
Minneapolis
St. Paul, Minn.
St. Louis
Newark, N.J.
New York
Philadelphia
Austin, Texas
Houston
Seattle
Madison, Wis.
Sanctuary states
Alaska
District of Columbia
Montana
New Mexico
Oregon
Source: National Immigration Law Center
Gee, you take a weekend off and there is a lot to read here at the Juice. Thanks for all the info. I think its unconscionable that Santa Ana isnt a sanctuary city too, especially since Garden Grove is.