Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

The issue of sanctuary cities has come up during the current debate on immigration. People get very emotional about the whole thing, those on the left running of about humanitarian concerns, those on the right taking about the need to protect the US from a rampaging horde of illegal aliens murdering, raping, and selling drugs illegally. Both sides have legitimate concerns. From a libertarian point of view this gets interesting, the right of freedom of movement on one hand and the rather hamfisted efforts of the left to recruit illegal aliens and their citizen friends as clients and friendly votes to create an antigun nanny police state (and the equally loud complaints about these efforts by the right among people who want to establish an “ihre Papiere bitte” police state).

As in many other debates in politics both sides try to avoid clearly defining terms. In many other debates it is usually one side or the other who do this. In the case of the debate over sanctuary cities both sides prefer obfuscation. Therefor I am going to offer the following definition, a sanctuary city is one which refuses to cooperate with the Federal government in enforcement of immigration laws, to include refusing to honor Federal "paper" on illegal immigrants in that city’s custody.

I am of the opinion that police should not go around requiring people to prove their citizenship or legality of their residency. Of course I live in an area where about 82% of the population is latino, if cops start checking citizenship papers they will never get around to preventing or solving crimes or arresting real criminals. Now if a person is stopped for traffic violation or real crime the officer is acting appropriately to see if there is existing paper on them, including hold requests from Immigration. A person who is a witness to a crime should not have to worry about being turned over to La Migra if they come forward. And definitely, if a criminal has finished their sentence and there is paper on them from ICE they should be held to turn over to ICE, not given wink, a nudge, and a head start. Irvin Gonzalez should not have been picked up in El Paso County Courthouse while filing a protective order against her boyfriend for abuse, neither should San Francisco have refused to honor the Immigration hold order on Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez and let him loose to murder Kathryn Steinle.

Both actions happened because people entrusted with the job of enforcing laws allegedly intended to protect the lives, liberty, and property of people in the US put getting brownie points for acting on right think ahead of their jobs.

So the next time someone starts popping off about sanctuary cities ask them to define their terms, especially if they are policy makers.