[ music ].

This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY.

Thank you.

With Pomeroy Markers, history is based on the facts, embedded by professional historians.

Over 3,000 installed nationwide, from Maine to Florida, to California, to Minnesota, to Texas and Alaska.

Since 2006, our markers have helped people celebrate community history.

Marker grant program information available at wgpfoundation.org.

Stickley Furniture is a proud underwriter of "Balancing Act" with John Katko.

Building on more than 125 years of expertise, Stickley is an enduring American brand that uses thoughtful design, authentic materials, and time-honored techniques to craft heirloom-quality furniture, cherished for generations.

[ music ] [ music ] KATKO: Welcome, America, to "Balancing Act", the show that aims to tame the political circus of two-party politics.

I'm John Katko.

This week, Sanctuary cities - Haven or Hindrance?

In the center ring, we're joined by former INS commissioner, Doris Meissner.

On the trapeze, New Haven, Connecticut, Mayor Justin Ellicker, and Jessica Vaughan from the Center for Immigration Studies will take swings at the issue.

Plus, I'll give you my take.

And did you know, some U.S.

kids have to cross an international border daily?

We'll explain.

But first, let's walk the tightrope.

We've all heard of sanctuary cities, counties, or states.

It sounds like an official legal designation, but it isn't.

There is no single federal definition.

Instead, it's a label that limits how much police, jails, or government employees help federal immigration enforcement.

The idea goes back decades.

In the 1980s, religious groups used the word sanctuary to describe shelter for Central American refugees fleeing violence.

Later, some cities turned that moral idea into local policy.

Limiting when, police could ask about immigration status, or when city resources could be used to help federal immigration enforcement.

Before 2003, immigration enforcement was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, which was inside the Justice Department.

After the 9/11 attacks, the federal government created the Department of Homeland Security, and in March of 2003, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE as it is commonly referred to, opened its doors, taking on immigration enforcement, customs investigations, detentions, and removals.

That shift matters because immigration enforcement became more closely tied to national security, local policing, and jail cooperation.

One major tool is the ICE detainer, sometimes called an ICE hold.

If someone is already in local custody for criminal conduct, ICE can ask the jail to hold that person for up to an additional 48 hours after they would otherwise be released, giving federal officers time to take custody.

The detainer must be based on probable cause that the person is subject to deportation under immigration law.

Another tool is to form local partnerships which allow trained local officers to perform certain immigration enforcement duties under ICE supervision.

The tension grew under the Obama administration when some communities expanded fingerprint sharing between local police and federal immigration databases.

Under the Trump administration, Washington stepped up the pressure, testing the limits of these self designated sanctuaries by bringing lawsuits and threatening to withhold much needed federal law enforcement funding.

Courts have responded by blocking parts of that effort.

Legally, the issue sits between two constitutional principles.

The supremacy clause says the federal law is supreme.

Cities cannot nullify immigration law or block federal officers, but the Tenth Amendment generally says Washington cannot force local officials to run a federal enforcement program.

For this reason, sanctuary cities are generally legal when they decline to assist.

They become vulnerable when they obstruct.

So, are sanctuary jurisdictions a haven or a hindrance?

Let's discuss that in the sanctuary of the center ring.

[ MUSIC ] Joining me is Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S.

Immigration and Naturalization Service, under President Clinton.

Welcome, Doris.

MEISSNER: Thank you very much.

I am pleased to be with you.

KATKO: Now, Doris, you served in the administration in that capacity for about seven years, and during that time, I was a prosecutor, I had a lot of interaction with INS, to say the least, back then, but back then, do you recall whether Sanctuary City was an issue like it is today?

MEISSNER: No, it wasn't not an issue, it was certainly not a terminology that was in use, and it was not a problem because there were very clear understandings about federal, state, and local authority.

We all cooperated, but we were not fighting against one another.

KATKO: So let's talk about that cooperation.

What did that cooperation entail, whether that you recall?

MEISSNER: Well, immigration law is a federal area of responsibility, federal government, and immigration law enforcement is a federal responsibility so it takes and authority.

So it takes preeminence over state and local enforcement, and state and local governments were not really interested or in the business of enforcing immigration law, but they certainly did cooperate with the federal government, and there was a lot of coordination, information sharing, collaboration, as a matter of professional practice, by law enforcement agencies at each level.

KATKO: So I remember when I was back then, we would do major organized crime cases, and if someone got grabbed on a local warrant for whatever, DWI, whatever, but they happened to be subject to deportation, we would often call them up and give them what's called a detainer, or sticker, so that they wouldn't be released without notifying us.

Did you find that to be the norm back then?

MEISSNER: That was the norm, and, of course, detainers are still in practice today, but they've become a much more contentious area of policy, but that, that is the, that has been the standard practice.

KATKO: So what happened, how did this change, and how did a simple act of saying, look, if this guy's in jail, can you hold him for me for a couple days?

MEISSNER: Well, I think there are a number of reasons.

The first reasons probably date back to 1996, which is when the Congress enacted a new sweeping immigration enforcement set of laws that had, with it, a whole different range of measures, among them, the authority for the federal government to delegate immigration enforcement authority to state and local officials.

Those are what's called 287G agreements.

Another thing that changed, and really the biggest thing that changed, is 9/11, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which, among other things, broke up the INS, that had all of these functions within one agency, and divided immigration enforcement into three different agencies, all within the Department of Homeland Security, but each one of them focused on its own mission, customs and border protection, where the border enforcement was concerned, ICE, Immigration, and Customs Enforcement for interior enforcement, and then USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is to facilitate legal immigration processes.

Each of those agencies began to get their own budgets, and there was in the post 9/11 era, and since then, defining immigration as a matter of national security and anti-terrorism, as compared to the context in the earlier years in the 1990s of immigration enforcement, as a the domestic law enforcement responsibility under the purview of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.

KATKO: So by breaking up the mission, it kind of changed everything, and obviously, 9/11 changed everything in many different ways.

But the rise of the sanctuary city, or a sanctuary designation, what do you think, and based on your expertise, is the strongest argument for a sanctuary or "welcoming city" for immigration policy?

MEISSNER: Yes, well, that, of course, is the other thing that has happened in the intervening years and post 9/11, because of what's happened overall in the country, which is that immigration has become an issue for all parts of the country, virtually all parts of the country, most all states.

In earlier years, immigration, and the destinations of immigrants, both legal immigrants, and unauthorized immigrants, tended to be in five or six large places, Florida, New York, Chicago, Southwest, Texas, and California.

That really changed during the 1990s so that immigration has now become a phenomenon that exists all over the country.

and is particularly concentrated in large cities.

So, from the standpoint of policing, in large cities, the policing efforts involve both people who have always lived there, but also newcomers, both people legally there and illegally there.

And the ways in which local law enforcement needs to do its job of ensuring public safety requires cooperation from the populations that, where the policing is taking place.

So when you have very large immigrant population centers, and you are also having the federal government, or, well, largely the federal government, enforcing immigration law in those communities, it really then leads to a reluctance of community members to trust and talk with local police.

So, more and more, local police, and, of course, the objection of immigrant advocates to deportation kinds of enforcement, those have all come together to lead cities, to become much more aware of immigration enforcement, and where they have large immigrant communities to establish policies to try to create the guide rules.

KATKO: Right, so that's one side of the coin, and that's some of the impetus, of course.

And just briefly, when does, like, talking when you non cooperation have been a sanctuary city, when does it become a problem?

When does it become an obstruction?

MEISSNER: Sure, well, in many ways, it's a misnomer, because all cities, even the ones that term themselves sanctuary cities, do cooperate with federal enforcement when it involves convicted criminals or people who are dangerous and are a public safety threat.

So that has generally not been the issue.

The issue is the degree to which local law enforcement supports federal law enforcement in their territory in a general untargeted fashion.

So that where cities object is when ICE, in particular, comes in and does either mass surges or is looking for somebody, but then it picks up everybody else in the apartment building, for instance, if it seems like they might be illegally in the country.

That's where the tension are.

that's what their tension obviously is today.

KATKO: With about 50 seconds left, does Washington have much power to force cities to cooperate with ice?

MEISSNER: No, it doesn't.

It can ask, and it has these agreements, what are called 287 G agreements that cities can sign up for.

But at the end of the day, cities are responsible for the enforcement in their areas, but that does not preclude ICE from coming in.

It just creates what are often chaotic conditions.

KATKO: Doris Meissner, former INS Commissioner, thanks so much for your insight.

I really appreciate your perspective.

MEISSNER: Thank you.

[ music ].

KATKO: Joining me now on the trapeze is Justin Elicker, the mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, and Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Thanks to both of you, Mr.

Mayor, I'd like to start off with you if I can.

New Haven is, as you've described is a welcoming city, which is tied with basically a sanctuary city type policy.

Could you tell me why you arrived at that type of policy, briefly, and what was the impetus for it?

ELICKER: Sure, and I think the reason that we don't use the word sanctuary is that oftentimes that term particularly Donald Trump, tends to use a different definition, that doesn't reflect at all what we are in New Haven, and what we're trying to accomplish here.

We are a welcoming city, and we welcome anyone that wants to be a productive part of our community.

And I want to emphasize productive because I think oftentimes there's a lot of rhetoric around immigrants and what cities like ours are trying to accomplish that's just false.

We want people that are going to be positive as far as their impact to the community.

We don't want criminals, we don't want rapists in our community, and we work very hard to hold folks that engage in illegal activities accountable.

But we want our residents to feel welcome and to thrive, and we're proud to have a long history similar to our nation of welcoming immigrants to our community.

So, Mr.

Mayor, if I can just follow real quick, does that mean that you make a delineation between, let's say, someone who is arrested on a violent charge, or a very serious charge, or the Feds come to you and say, Look, we're going to arrest this guy in a few days in a very serious charge.

Do you cooperate with them, then, like, hold them for a couple days on a detainer, or is it straight you don't cooperate at all with federal immigration?

ELICKER: So if there's a judicial warrant, we will honor that, if that comes from the federal government.

Reality is, we cooperate very closely with the federal government, on confronting violent crime in our city.

We regularly work with the DEA, FBI, and the ATF, and have a lot of success in arresting people that are involved in violent crime.

So, our police department and other employees are not allowed to ask someone's immigration status because we want to build that trust.

If there are people in our community that have information, they want to share about a crime, or are victims of a crime themselves and want to feel comfortable reaching out to the police, we think it's very important to have that kind of trust so that people are willing to reach out to the police department.

But when there is someone that does something significantly illegal and violent, we will hold them accountable, whether they're a U.S.

citizen or not.

KATKO: Jessica, what's the strongest public safety argument against sanctuary or welcoming city policies?

Do you have any concerns what Mayor Elicker said?

VAUGHN: Yes, the problem is that sanctuary policies prevent ICE from doing the work it does of enforcing immigration laws against its highest priority targets.

This is because sanctuary policies typically prohibit local law enforcement agencies from communicating with ICE, from sharing information, from honoring detainers in the system that Congress created when they provide probable cause and a warrant of arrest or a warrant of removal.

The result is that the people that ICE is trying to arrest end up being released back into the community.

Then ICE has to go looking for them and make those arrests in public places, which is very unnerving to the public and it's more dangerous for everyone.

So we have to remember that ICE is primarily targeting the most egregious immigration offenders, particularly criminals, and immigrants in their community don't want to have these people returned to those communities to continue preying on them and committing more crimes.

We know, according to government records, that more than 10,000 criminal aliens that ICE was seeking were released back into communities, and detainers were not honored, and subsequently committed additional crimes.

And these are needless crimes.

So it's not really keeping the community safer to be shunning ice, to be singling out ICE for non-cooperation between law enforcement agencies.

We also know that sanctuary policies do not increase crime reporting by immigrants, according to the Department of Justice data.

So, there really is no good public safety argument in favor of sanctuary policies.

All law enforcement agencies should be cooperating on behalf of public safety.

So, Mayor Elicker, what's your response to that?

ELICKER: I think there's some things that are not accurate there.

We don't prevent ICE from doing anything.

Ice is legally allowed to operate in New Haven like they are in any city in the United States, and they do so.

And so it's not accurate to say that our law enforcement is preventing ICE from doing their job, what our policy is, is that we don't do ICE's job.

Our police officers have enough to worry about with the challenges we face in our cities, around violent crime, they're trained to do that work.

They're not trained to do the work of the federal government.

And we're also not releasing people that are violent.

When we arrest someone engaged in serious criminal activity, we do not release them.

They go through the criminal justice system, like everyone else, and just to give you an example of a problem that happens if someone is deported, they can potentially come back into our country.

We had an individual that attacked someone in our city that was undocumented.

The individual didn't even live in our city.

We arrested this person, and this person is going through the justice system.

This person was previously detained in Texas, released, came back into the United States, and then it was up to New Haven hold that person accountable.

So, I think there's things that are oftentimes a narrative that is unaccurate.

The majority of people that ICE is wrapping up around the country are not serious violent criminals, and I hope we all, as a nation, can agree that we want to arrest and hold violent criminals accountable.

KATKO: So, Mr.

Mayor, a brief question here, there's different layers of cooperation with ICE, and one of them, in particular, is the detainers.

So if ICE issues a detainer, it gives you a detainer, saying there's probable cause to believe that this individual is illegal, and you have him arrested, do you ever honor those detainers, or do you not honor those?

ELICKER: If they have a judicial warrant, we will honor them, but otherwise, we will not honor them.

Just to be clear, we live in a nation that people have due process, just like, if you were accused of something, you would have to go through due process.

If there's someone that is a criminal that has been convicted of a crime in the state of Connecticut, if there is a certain category of crimes, those individuals will be turned over to ICE.

KATKO: So, Jessica, about a minute and a half left and give you some balanced time here.

What's your response to that, and going forward?

What are your concerns about that?

VAUGHN: Well, requiring ICE to produce a judicial warrant is like saying ICE needs to produce the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.

There is no judge or process for getting those judicial warrants, and Congress has never required ICE to do so.

They're providing a statement of probable cause and a warrant of arrest or removal.

And that's how the system works.

They're trying to make, to take these people into custody after all their local charges are disposed of so that they can be returned to their home country rather than allowed to remain here in defiance and violation of our immigration laws.

So what the sanctuary jurisdictions are doing is really preventing ICE from doing its job, and a job that's very important and that Americans want to have enforced.

To block communication between locals and ICE is going to stymie that and sometimes prevent local authorities from really understanding who some of the people in their custody really are.

So it's ICE is not asking local police to do its job.

They're simply asking to be able to communicate the same way that these local police agencies communicate with other federal agencies.

KATKO: Jessica, thanks, thanks.

And, you know, obviously, the debate continues, and, you know, it seems to me that the more the communication is between law enforcement on all our levels, the better, and I think you both agree with that.

I want to thank you both for a spirited conversation.

It was enlightening, so thank you very much, both of you.

[ music ].

KATKO: Like most political issues these days, sanctuary jurisdictions are much more nuanced than they first appear.

The desire for ICE to want to work with local law enforcement, to get bad actors who are in the U.S.

illegally off the streets, and then deported, seems logical and laudable.

But when you overreach and start sweeping up every single person that is here technically illegally, yet are not a security issue or lawbreaker, you give rise to moments like sanctuary cities.

I know from personal experience as a federal organized crime prosecutor, that law enforcement on all levels works best when they work together.

Forming partnerships and respecting goals and concerns at each level make for better policy and cooperation.

We would do well to remember that when implementing ICE-related law enforcement.

And that's my take.

[ music ].

Did you know that some kids in Point Roberts, Washington State, have had to cross an international border just to get to school?

You see, Point Roberts is part of the United States, but it's cut off from the rest of this state of Washington by Canada, meaning a trip to school involves going through the Canadian province of British Columbia first.

which gives them the perfect excuse for being tardy: Sorry I'm late, my tuna fish sandwich got held up at Customs.

And now you do know.

[ music ].

That's all for this week, folks.

To send in your comments for the show, or to see "Balancing Act", Extras, and Exclusives, follow us on social media, or go to BalancingActwithJohnKatko.com.

Thank you for joining us, and remember, in the circus that is politics, there is always a "Balancing Act".

I'm John Katko.

We'll see you next week, America.

[ music ] With Pomeroy Markers, history is based on the facts embedded by professional historians, over 3,000 installed nationwide, from Maine to Florida, to California, to Minnesota, Texas, and Alaska.

Since 2006, our markers have helped people celebrate community history.

Marker grant program information available at wgpfoundation.org.

It takes time to craft a piece of furniture and to craft a 125 year legacy.

It takes patience to execute every detail the right way.

And it takes family, working to bring out the best in each other over generations.

This is Stickley, the furniture that serves generations of family.

Maturing with time, rewarding patience, and celebrating every detail.

This is what excellence means.