By practicing “sanctuary city” policies, or close approximations thereof, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams and other area officials are playing a foolish and dangerous game.
On Feb. 8, the national CBS Evening ƹϴý ran called “As ICE ramps up immigration sweeps, New Orleans’ sanctuary city status could be put to the test.” Noting the city’s 10,000 non-citizen residents (presumably most of whom, but certainly not all, are “undocumented”), the story cited complaints from Brian Acuna, deputy field officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Acuna said the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office is the only one in the state that has not been “cooperative” with efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes.
“ICE has to take our time and investigate and expend more resources to go back out into the community, and at times, arrest a person a second or a third time when the sheriff's office refuses to cooperate with our detainer,” Acuna said.
And it’s not just Sheriff Susan Hutson refusing to cooperate. Williams, the DA, went on camera to and insist that Orleans Parish would not cooperate with ICE unless the illegal immigrants are charged with violent crimes. Not only does Williams think that being here illegally is OK, but that not even committing another crime should be grounds for deportation as long as the new crime isn’t violent.
“Yeah, I don't think the tolerance level, or the way that New Orleans shows love, is going to change, simply because of a change in the administration,” Williams said.
It is not a prosecutor’s job to ignore the law in favor of a blanket form of “tolerance,” and it certainly isn’t his job to “show love.” His job is to enforce the law. While that doesn’t mean the sheriff needs to make special efforts to arrest people merely for being undocumented or that Williams should prosecute them for it, it does mean he has an obligation if an illegal immigrant is in custody anyway. In that circumstance, as part of his oath to support the U.S. Constitution, he should cooperate in every way with federal authorities who are enforcing laws duly passed via constitutional means.
Moreover, after last year’s passage of a state law against sanctuary city policies, the sheriff and DA are required to “make best efforts” to help with immigration enforcement. By active refusal to cooperate with the feds, Williams essentially is impeding the ability of ICE officials to deport arrestees who also are undocumented immigrants. He arguably is violating state law if he persists in this approach.
And he and Sheriff Hutson certainly aren’t serving area citizens well if it’s true that ICE is forced to rearrest the same people several times because local officials refuse to cooperate. Again, these arrests all involve people who already are here illegally whom ICE wants detained and deported because, in addition to violating immigration laws, they are credibly accused of breaking other laws once here. In sum, Hutson and Williams are letting criminals back into our neighborhoods — almost as if they are giving street criminals special privileges because they are, in the actual terminology of federal statutes, “unauthorized aliens.”
And federal law, Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a), to “conceal … unauthorized aliens.” So Hutson and Williams at least arguably are violating federal law as well.
They won’t like this comparison, but it is apt: They have no more right to impede federal law enforcement than did Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the schoolhouse door or than does President Donald Trump in firing inspectors general and Justice Department officials without following duly passed laws governing terms of their employment. Nobody has a right to pick and choose which laws he will obey.
Granted, Orleans officials are fond of claiming that the federal court-ordered consent decree involving local police precludes them from cooperating with federal law enforcement relating to immigrants. This assertion is somewhere between dubious and debatable, especially since the author of the , Sen. Blake Miguez, R-New Iberia, has said should be construed to avoid any conflict with the consent decree.
Either way, the consent-decree fig leaf soon will disappear entirely, as U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan has , belatedly, of ending the overly burdensome decree.
If Hutson and Williams and other local officials continue their sanctuary-like policies, state and federal officials ought to pursue all available civil penalties against them. Lawlessness from law-enforcement personnel must not be tolerated.