Just as President Donald Trump begins his full work week, The Washington Post is warning the District of Columbia to tread lightly as it attempts to become a sanctuary city.
In an editorial board-signed piece by the Post gives tips to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) on how to get by as a sanctuary city under a Trump Administration that has already promised to combat such policies:
In drafting the program’s fine print, however, D.C. officials should take care: It’s not just most undocumented immigrants facing legal travails who merit protections. So do ordinary Washingtonians.
Officials in Ms. Bowser’s office insist, with reason, that the District’s undocumented immigrants are generally law-abiding. Unlike other localities, where most long-term prisoners would be incarcerated in the state’s prison system, those convicted of serious crimes in the District are sent to federal prisons. In the case of illegal immigrants, that means there is little or no chance they will be released back into the District upon completion of their sentence; they are far more likely to be deported.
Nonetheless, it is worth bearing in mind the unhappy experience of some other so-called sanctuary cities, whose zeal to defy federal immigration authorities has at times defeated common sense. In the prime example, San Francisco officials in 2015 ignored a detainer, an official request from federal immigration officials seeking custody of an undocumented immigrant with a long record of drug offenses. The man should have been turned over to federal officials; instead, he was released. A few weeks later, he shot and killed a young woman strolling with her father on the waterfront.
The Washington Post’s editorial board goes on to make light of D.C.’s expected sanctuary city policy, writing that “Officials say they recognize a legitimate middle ground between complete noncooperation and allowing local police to become an auxiliary deportation force.”
The Post calls this approach to implementing a sanctuary city policy a “sensible stance,” though the Trump Administration, with the help of likely Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has pledged to cut federal funds for locales with sanctuary polices or sue them for refusing to follow federal immigration law.
New York’s sanctuary policy of protecting ex-convict illegal immigrants from deportation was also cited by the Washington Post, with the paper calling the plan a “sound policy.”
John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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