Congress to New York (and Chicago and L.A.): Drop dead

Popular proposals to choke off federal support to immigrant-friendly "sanctuary cities" would also dry up anti-terror funding for the cities most at risk.

By Alex Koppelman

Read more: Rudy Giuliani, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Politics, Ed Koch, San Francisco, News, Immigration, Tom Tancredo, 2008 election, Mitt Romney, Alex Koppelman

Oct. 4, 2007 | Al-Qaida's targets on 9/11 were in New York City and Washington. But if Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and 233 other members of the U.S. House have their way, those cities and others at high risk of terrorist attacks, including some that have reportedly been the target of foiled plots, would be stripped of the federal funding intended to keep their citizens safe from attack.

At issue are so-called sanctuary cities. There is no single definition of a "sanctuary city," but in essence it is one that takes a "don't ask, don't tell" stance toward the immigration status of its residents. For example, a sanctuary city might bar local police from inquiring about or disclosing the status of a victim or witness of a crime. A comprehensive list of sanctuary cities would have to include a huge swath of urban America. It would include the four biggest cities in the United States, the majority of the 25 biggest cities, and every one of the six urban areas the Department of Homeland Security says face the highest risk of terrorism -- New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston.

Spurred by the GOP base's anger over illegal immigration, Republicans in the House have introduced several bills and amendments that would impose financial penalties on those sanctuary cities. Two measures, amendments to larger spending bills, have already passed. Such proposals have also become an issue in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and several candidates have voiced their support.

But the proposals involve depriving the nation's biggest and most vulnerable cities of their anti-terror funding. To fight the War on Illegal Immigration, the party is willing to defund the War on Terror. For residents of America's major cities, it might therefore be reassuring to know that most of the measures, even as they're approved by Congress, are written in such a way that they'll be hard to enforce.

There are many overlapping lists of sanctuary, none of them definitive. The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, counts 32 cities, towns and counties, as well as two states, Alaska and Oregon, as sanctuaries. Altogether, the jurisdictions in the CRS count -- including, for example, New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle -- encompass roughly 25 million people, or more than 8 percent of the population of the United States. And the CRS list is fairly limited; it leaves off some large cities like Chicago, Boston and Washington, which have similar policies, or others, like Miami and Denver, that Tancredo has accused of having such policies. The National Immigration Law Center, a liberal advocacy group, has put together a preliminary list of "laws, resolutions and policies ... limiting enforcement of immigration laws by state and local authorities." (The NILC doesn't like or use the "sanctuary city" term, but its list is a fair stand-in for a comprehensive account of the cities that opponents of sanctuary policies would describe as "sanctuary cities.") That list includes nearly 70 jurisdictions, and even it doesn't include some locales considered sanctuary cities by anti-illegal immigration activists.

At the moment, several proposals that would restrict funding to sanctuary cities are wending their way through Congress. Two, attached as amendments to spending bills, passed the House of Representatives this summer. One, proposed by Tancredo and attached to the appropriations bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, provided that no funds from the bill -- meaning no DHS anti-terror money -- could go to a sanctuary city. That amendment passed by a vote of 234-189, and the bill to which it was attached later passed the House by a large margin. A version of the bill passed by the Senate does not include Tancredo's amendment -- T.Q. Houlton, Tancredo's spokesman, described the chance it will be added to the final bill in committee as "slim." A similar amendment, added to the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act by Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Va., passed by voice vote. The House has passed that larger bill as well, but the Senate has yet to take it up.

Other bills that would punish sanctuary cities are on their way. Among them is H.R. 3549, The No Sanctuary for Illegals Act. Introduced by Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., the bill cuts all federal funding to sanctuary cities. Burton's office did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. Another recently introduced bill is H.R. 3531, the Accountability in Enforcing Immigration Laws Act of 2007, sponsored by Reps. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla.; Brian Bilbray, R-Calif.; Jeff Miller, R-Fla.; Tancredo and Drake. That bill cuts 25 percent of "non-emergency" DHS funding from sanctuary cities and gives the head of DHS the discretion to cut an additional 25 percent.

Punishing sanctuary cities with legislation has a clear political upside. Such measures enjoy solid support among the anti-immigration segments of the Republican base. The issue has come up in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has used the subject in radio ads and debates, wielding it as a club with which to batter former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a rival candidate. While mayor, Giuliani was a staunch defender of the city's policies, even filing an unsuccessful lawsuit to try to protect one part of the policy, since amended, from federal efforts to end it. In a 1996 speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, given the day before he filed the suit, Giuliani hit out at the federal government and anti-immigration forces generally, saying, "I believe the anti-immigration movement in America is one of our most serious public problems ... I know that our executive order offends some people. They ask, 'Why should we pay to provide services for illegal immigrants?' The answer is, It's not only to protect them, but to protect the rest of society as well."

But opposition to sanctuary cities is not a purely Republican issue. A poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports in August put the proportion of likely voters in favor of cutting federal funding to sanctuary cities at 58 percent, with just 29 percent opposed. Up to 49 Democratic members of the House have supported some versions of the anti-sanctuary legislation.

Bilbray says he thinks public support will eventually force the passage of some anti-sanctuary measure. "I think the Democrats are going to realize, look, we have to take this one," he said. "Because the areas where they're demanding sanctuary for illegals, they're not at-risk districts. They're not the districts where they're going to either hold, or lose the majority. It's going to be those places where the illegal immigration is a real hot issue, and the sanctuary city thing will hurt them if they stand by it."

Next page: "We run the risk of inviting terror into these cities"