( Feb. 16) 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 News ran a story 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 embrace sanctuary city policies 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…. [The rest of the column is at this link.]
