Sanctuary mayors say they’ll fight with Trump

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference this week to reassure uneasy residents.

Thaís Marques, a 22-year-old political science graduate student at Rutgers who is also working with Movimiento Cosecha, said she was “pretty devastated” when Trump won the election. “Seattle has always been a welcoming city”, the city’s mayor, Ed Murray said.

The protests come amid fears of how undocumented college students in the USA could be impacted by a Trump presidency, given his inflammatory rhetoric and threats to deport millions of immigrants without legal residency.

Texas is moving forward with legislation to block sanctuary city policies in the Lone Star State.

Mayors of Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco have promised to fight federal efforts under a Trump administration. It also pledged not to release student information “unless required by law”.

Yesterday, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry issued a statement saying she does not believe that local resources should be used to enforce federal immigration policy. In some areas, undocumented immigrants can still access public services because they are granted city ID cards without immigration checks.

However, critics say the term is misleading because people can still be deported from these jurisdictions by federal authorities. Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, doesn’t think so, because this is really a federal issue that is out of the city’s hands.

“We will fight any illegal attempt to remove people illegally here”, said Rep. Nydia Velazquez of NY. “If our police were doing the work of ICE, Minneapolis would be less safe for everyone, regardless of immigration status”.

“We see this as a concrete action the university can take to support and protect the people within our community”, the letter says, citing an official 2011 memo from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that restricts agents from entering schools. The requests are non-binding, meaning that they are indeed requests and not orders.

It is unclear where Trump found those statistics, or how he will go about rounding up undocumented immigrants who have committed a crime, or even to what qualifies as a crime worthy of deportation. “We have been, and always have been, a city of refuge, a city of sanctuary, a city of love”. Also, without the protection of sanctuary cities, a “show me your papers” culture will inevitably and easily lead to profiling. In fact, the legal battle could end up going in their favor. “We care only what you want do in this city”.

About 300 jurisdictions nationwide have sanctuary-like policies, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which calls for lower immigration levels.

A prime example for supporters of a crackdown on sanctuary cities is the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle previous year on a San Francisco pier. Her death soon became political, with then-candidate Trump declaring that the murder was “disgraceful and totally preventable”.

Now that Donald Trump has been elected President, the world looks to his first 100 days in office.

The universities aren’t alone in making preemptive statements about Trump’s immigration policies.

A City typically gains “sanctuary” status upon passing an ordinance prohibiting City officials and police from inquiring about a person’s immigration status.

The showdown has yet to begin.