I’ve no idea who chose the label “sanctuary” for either the concept or its practical execution of the Left’s aggressive opposition to enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws. Regardless, it was a politically brilliant choice — and at the same time, immeasurably harmful.

The word sanctuary evokes feelings of safety, security, and shelter. In church, the sanctuary is a sacred space, often near the altar, where one communes with the Almighty. In the outdoors, bird and animal sanctuaries protect endangered species from predators.

And now we have political sanctuaries — by the Justice Department’s count, 11 states, the District of Columbia, 18 cities, and three counties — that have adopted and implemented various ways to block the federal government’s (DHS) efforts to detain and deport illegal immigrants, particularly those engaged in violent criminal actions.

So, let’s be very clear. The first responsibility of our government at every level — federal, state, and local — is to protect its citizens. The deliberate choice by state and local law enforcement not to support — and in some cases to actively obstruct — federal efforts to do so has exactly the opposite effect. Rather than protecting our citizens, sanctuary policies and practices expose them to serious risk. The all-too-common consequence is grievous, sometimes fatal harm to our own citizens. Lives are destroyed; people die.

The designation and details of sanctuary practices vary from place to place, but all are in Democrat led jurisdictions and are largely motivated by political disagreement with federal efforts to deal with the consequences of years of uncontrolled illegal entry into our nation by unknown, unvetted migrants, and particularly the flood of illegals during the Biden administration.

Of course, not all illegal migrants are violent criminals. But too many are. Some are affiliated with known criminal gangs, some have violent backgrounds, and some obviously come to the U.S. with the intent of continuing their violent activities. We know that the illegal immigrants number in the millions (perhaps north of 20 million), but in most cases, we don’t know who they are, where they live, and which ones pose danger to Americans.

Crime statistics usually don’t classify immigration status, so we don’t know, precisely, what fractions of those crimes were committed by illegal aliens. But here’s what we know for sure:

  • Every one of those heinous crimes — murder, rapes, assaults, drug distribution, human trafficking — found to have been committed by illegal immigrants, would have been prevented had our border been closed (as it is now).
  • Even with the millions of unvetted illegal immigrants now here, a significant fraction of the violent crimes committed by the criminals among them would have been prevented if the federal immigration agents (primarily ICE) and local judicial and law enforcement personnel had cooperated in prompt removal of those engaged in criminal activity as soon as they were identified. In sanctuary jurisdiction, the opposite is currently the rule.

Last week, DHS head Markwayne Mullin reported that New York City judicial and law enforcement authorities have chosen to take no action on thousands of detainer orders on illegal immigrants in their custody. Instead, in each instance, a known or suspected violent criminal was released from their custody into the population at large, effectively saying to the federal immigration enforcement (ICE) “good luck in finding and nabbing this character before he or she hurts someone else.”

It has become painfully obvious that local entities’ deliberate non-cooperation with federal authorities is grossly improper. As one example, does it make any sense at all for federal agents attempting to apprehend dangerous criminals to simultaneously control automobile traffic in the area? That’s not just just senseless, it’s insane — and it is exactly what happens in sanctuary cities, where local police are directed to stand back and watch from the sidelines as the chairs unfolds. The inevitable result? As we saw in Minneapolis, somebody dies.

Note that when the above reality is mentioned, apologists are always quick to point out that statistically, illegal immigrants are no more dangerous than American citizens — an argument that is both highly questionable (see the above comment about statistics) and certainly irrelevant. Let your head play for a minute with the notion that we should not be overly concerned about illegal immigrant monsters in our midst because there we already have a proportionally similar number of American-born monsters.

Seriously? Try consoling the mother whose daughter had been raped and murdered by an illegal alien — someone we’d neglected to remove from our society — by assuring her that her daughter’s heinous assault could just as easily have happened at the hands of an American-born assailant.

I believe that sanctuary policies and practices are inherently unconstitutional, and in fact there are numerous lawsuits working their way through the legal system, challenging the legality of such policies and practices. But I’ve lost all patience with the tedious and seemingly endless legalistic debates over the subtle conflict between the federal government’s authority to enforce the law and the right of states and cities to demonstrate their objection to it.

I propose a simpler solution. Let’s skip that part altogether. If our two political sides would simply recall their common responsibility, stop arguing, and instead commit to working together constructively in service to the people they’ve sworn to protect, the entire debate would evaporate. Poof — job done, lawsuits tossed in the circular file, lives saved.

In their politically opportunistic fight with the supposed ICE’s reign of terror, sanctuary cities and states make the jobs of federal agents’ (who work for us) immeasurably more dangerous, and they simultaneously expose their own citizens to both the danger posed by violent criminals in their neighborhoods and to the very real dangers that come with unhelpful, aggressive opposition.

The creation of city and state sanctuaries was supposedly intended to protect illegal immigrants from unfair treatment. It’s a scam. in fact they harm the American citizens those states and cities are bound to protect.