My colleague Jason Richwine estimates that a little over half of the illegal-alien population resides in sanctuary cities or states. At first, I thought the share should be higher, given that New York, California, and Illinois are all sanctuary states: California alone accounts for nearly 22 percent of the illegal population. (See our sanctuary map here.)
But then I remembered that immigrant-heavy Texas and Florida both ban sanctuary policies — something that states, unlike the feds, can do, since municipalities are creations of the state legislatures, while the states are parallel sovereigns rather than creations of Congress.
This came to mind today as I read a story by the indefatigable Anna Giaritelli at the Washington Examiner based on an interview with incoming border czar Tom Homan. What jumped out at me was Homan’s reference to “collateral arrests” — i.e., ordinary illegal aliens encountered in the process of apprehending those who are the first priorities, namely criminals or deportation fugitives:
“In sanctuary cities, expect a lot of collateral arrests,” Homan said. “I mean, not priority criminal arrests. We can’t get the bad guy in jail. That means we have to go into the communities and find them, and there may be others. We expect a lot of collateral arrests.”
Considering the large number of criminal aliens and fugitives from deportation, ICE could easily spend all its time taking handoffs from local cops and deporting them. But since sanctuary jurisdictions won’t let ICE into their jails and prisons to take deportable aliens off their hands, ICE has to go out looking for them among lots of non-priority illegals, whom they’re also going to apprehend if they find them.
So, the best strategy for a sanctuary city or state that wants to prevent run-of-the-mill illegal aliens from getting caught up in an ICE dragnet? Let ICE into your jails and prisons and keep them busy processing criminals! As counterintuitive or even trollish as this may seem, it really would work out that way, with the added benefit of protecting immigrants of all kinds from bad guys, since immigrant criminals are mainly preying on other immigrants.
State and local Democrats who want to claw back some credibility on immigration would do well to consider this.