Sanctuary Cities: Sanctuaries for Criminals
 
 http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1298284
 By Michael Cutler
 
 
 Sanctuary cities sound like a nice idea – but in reality, they provide havens for lawbreakers at the expense of U.S. citizens and other legal residents. FSM Contributing Editor Michael Cutler clarifies the reasons why our immigration laws should not be ignored, but heeded.
 
 “Sanctuary cities” have become the focus of much attention of late in the wake of the horrific triple murder recently committed in Newark, New Jersey.
 
 The use of the term “sanctuary city” turns both reason and truth upside down. The first shot fired in the "war of words" to which open border advocates have resorted was fired by Jimmy Carter, when he mandated that INS employees no longer use the term "illegal alien" to describe an alien who was illegally present in the United States. His commissioner for the INS, Lionel Castillo, mandated that the INS refer to these people as "undocumented workers," a term that is still used today.
 
 The term "alien" is not a pejorative but is, rather, a legal term. The Immigration and Nationality Act defines an alien as a person who is not a citizen or national of the United States. The term "alien" goes back to the beginnings of our nation. The obvious goal in this misuse of language is to obfuscate the issues. This is nothing short of a form of Orwellian "Newspeak." Clearly, the goal is to blur the distinction between aliens who are legally present in the United States and aliens who are not.
 
 A while back, the President stated that he wanted to "legalize the immigrants." As I wrote at the time, this is akin to saying that he wanted to make water wet! Legal aliens can take virtually any job they are qualified to do, they can petition the government to accord resident alien status for their immediate family members and, in fact, immigrants can then be on the path to United States citizenship! How much more legal would President Bush make them? I have also said the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is the equivalent of the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.
 
 The concept of a so-called sanctuary city is not a new development, but has been an issue for a number of years. On February 27, 2003, I was called to testify at a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. The title of that hearing was: "NEW YORK CITY'S 'SANCTUARY' POLICY AND THE EFFECT OF SUCH POLICIES ON PUBLIC SAFETY, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND IMMIGRATION"
 
 The chairman of that subcommittee at the time, John Hostettler, convened the hearing and started out by saying:
 HOSTETTLER: The Subcommittee will now come to order.
 
 On December 19, 2002, a 42-year-old mother of two was abducted and forced by her assailants into a hideout near some railroad tracks in Queens, New York. She was brutally assaulted before being rescued by a New York Police Department canine unit.
 
 The NYPD arrested five aliens in connection with that assault. According to records that the Judiciary Committee has received from the INS, four of those aliens entered the United States illegally. Three of those four had extensive arrest histories in New York City. The fifth alien, a lawful permanent resident, also had a criminal history prior to the December 19, 2002, attack.
 
 Despite the criminal histories of the four aliens, however, it does not appear from the records that the Committee has received that the NYPD told the INS about these aliens until after the December 19 attack. These heinous crimes prompted extensive public discussion of whether New York City police were barred from disclosing immigration information to the INS, a policy that may have prevented the removal of these aliens prior to the December 19 attack.
 
 Some suggested that the only reason that the three illegal aliens were in the United States, despite their extensive arrest histories, was because the NYPD officers who arrested these aliens previously were barred by a so-called ''sanctuary'' policy from contacting the INS. That policy, critics claimed, prevented NYPD officers from contacting the INS when they arrested an illegal alien.
 
 We will examine New York City's policy on the NYPD's disclosure of immigration information to the INS. New York's Executive Order, or E.O. 124, barred line officers from communicating directly with the INS about criminal aliens. That executive order was issued by Mayor Ed Koch in 1989 and reissued by Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani.
 
 Two Federal provisions, both of which were passed in 1996, preempted this executive order. In particular, section 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act bars States and localities from prohibiting their officers from sending immigration information to the INS. New York City challenged that provision in Federal court and lost.
 
 We will examine whether New York City continued E.O. 124, amended it, or scrapped it altogether. We will also examine what guidance the city has sent to its officers on the street about reporting criminal aliens to the INS.
 
 You can read a transcript of that hearing in its entirety here. In fact, I urge you to read it, and then I would like you to consider precisely what the term “sanctuary” is supposed to mean.
 
 The term "sanctuary" is defined, in part, by the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary as:
 "... a place of refuge and protection (2) : a refuge for wildlife where predators are controlled and hunting is illegal b : the immunity from law attached to a sanctuary"
 
 If a sanctuary city is, indeed, "a place of refuge and protection," then I believe that it would be wonderful if every city in our country were a true sanctuary for law-abiding citizens and non-citizens alike! However, we all know that the use of the term "sanctuary" represents yet another example of semantic word-play and obfuscation utilized by those who favor the dismantling of our nation's borders and the blurring (if not the flat-out eradication) of the distinction between immigrants and illegal aliens.
 
 To declare a city as a sanctuary city, the mayor or other such politician is declaring that the immigration laws should not be enforced and our nation's borders should not be protected. Such politicians cannot refute my assertions because it is impossible to otherwise explain why they would want to encourage illegal aliens to come to their cities to live and ply their trades whether they are construction workers, landscapers, or child molesters, rapists, drug traffickers, gang members or terrorists!
 
 If this seems harsh to you, let me explain my position as clearly as I know how.
 
 Let us first understand that the inspections process conducted by inspectors of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) is not a mere formality. The inspector is not the equivalent of a toll collector on a highway or bridge. The alien who runs our nation's borders is most definitely not the equivalent of a motorist who fails to drop a couple of quarters in the collection basket before driving across a bridge. The inspector is charged with the extremely serious responsibility of making certain that an alien seeking entry into our country meets the statutory obligations to be admitted either as an immigrant (a Green Card holder) who is permanently admitted (and who may ultimately be eligible to seek to naturalize and become a United States citizen), or as a non-immigrant, that is to say, a temporary visitor who may be coming for vacation, schooling, business or some other temporary purpose and will presumably return to his country after the purpose of his visit is completed.
 
 The laws that the inspector enforces makes it clear that there are distinct reasons to keep aliens from entering our country; these laws are enumerated in the Immigration and Nationality Act, the body of law that pertains to the admission of aliens into the United States. There are also other issues pertaining to visitors’ continued presence in our country, as well as their lawful right to petition our government for resident alien status and United States citizenship.
 
 In carrying out his duties, an inspector is charged with the mission of keeping out aliens who pose a risk to our nation and our citizens. Among aliens who are supposed to be barred from entering our country are those who have altered (or have fraudulent) travel documents, who have serious criminal histories, who suffer from mental illness, who harbor deadly contagious diseases, who are involved with terrorist organizations, who are involved with violent gangs, who would appear to be intent on seeking unauthorized employment, or who would seek to become a financial burden to our nation.
 
 I can tell you from personal experience that the mission of the inspector is extremely daunting. I began my career with the former INS as an immigration inspector at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 1971. I held that position for about four years before becoming a criminal investigator (special agent).
 
 The mission of the inspector is of great significance and as you might expect, when an alien runs our nation's borders, the screening process mandated by law is utterly sidestepped. It is no different from a burglar entering your home in the dead of night by climbing in through a back window. While it is true that the majority of illegal aliens are simply trying to take a job that an American won't do for the money an illegal alien would accept (often under illegally dangerous conditions), there are a significant number of illegal aliens who enter our country without inspection because they are desperate to avoid law enforcement authorities in their own countries for committing serious crimes.
 
 You cannot tell a dishwasher from a bank robber without a scorecard, and undocumented aliens have no scorecards! Without documentation, it is impossible to determine the name or nationality of an illegal alien. It is impossible to know when, where, or how an illegal alien entered our country. This is why I came to refer to the Senate "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill" as the "Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007." The overworked and inept USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) agency would have had to provide official identity documents to some 100,000 illegal and undocumented aliens each and every day, even though there would be no way of knowing their true identities!
 
 Yet there are politicians who are all too willing to guarantee illegal aliens that they are welcome in their towns and cities. If you were a fugitive alien desperate to avoid deportation (a relatively rare occurrence), would you go to a city that cooperates with ICE? Or would you go to a city that makes it clear that they will not even talk to officials of ICE?
 
 There are other issues to be considered when you contemplate the issue of sanctuary cities. Illegal aliens are able to accept lower wages because they generally live together in tiny apartments. Would you like to live in an apartment or own a house where down the block, or perhaps down the hall, 20 adult men are jammed into an apartment that was originally intended to house a family of 4? This level of overcrowding creates major hygiene issues, and such apartments can become fire traps. When large numbers of illegal aliens move into a community, a number of illegal enterprises often spring up to take advantage of this population. Among these businesses are houses of prostitution to cater to the large number of young, lonely, and isolated men whose families are generally abandoned back home. These houses of prostitution often engage in human trafficking in order to have an ample number of prostitutes to service their customers. These brothels also create the potential for public health issues with the spread of STDs.
 
 Drug trafficking organizations may also spring up in such neighborhoods, because most narcotics are produced outside the United States and smuggled into the United States by aliens engaged in the drug trade. I spent more than a dozen years working with various federal agencies including the DEA, FBI and ATF, investigating narcotics trafficking organizations. From 1988 until 1991, I was assigned to the Unified Intelligence Division of the DEA in New York and I conducted a study about the defendants who were arrested by the DEA. I found that in New York City, some 60% of the individuals arrested by the DEA were identified as being "foreign born." Nationwide, some 30% of the defendants arrested by DEA were so defined.
 
 Hospitals located in communities that harbor large numbers of illegal aliens suffer the consequences of having illegal aliens using their emergency rooms as primary health care providers, often not being remunerated for the expenses they incur in treating the illegal aliens who crowd the emergency room waiting area.
 
 Sanctuary cities not only simply attract illegal aliens into those communities, but also draw massive numbers of illegal aliens across our nation's borders, convincing those aliens that they can expect to be able to enter our country in utter violation of our laws and have a safe place to set up shop inside the United States. The notorious bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks. His laconic response: "That's where the money is!"
 
 For aliens who seek to enter our country in violation of law, their objectives are similarly focused. They too are looking to get their hands on money by working in violation of law or by committing felonies. The establishment of sanctuary cities encourages them to attain their goals in our country. Terrorist sleepers would also, undoubtedly, seek to embed themselves in communities where the likelihood of cooperation between local police and immigration authorities is vastly reduced.
 
 Sanctuary is supposed to mean a place of safety. How safe would you feel if you knew that there were large numbers of illegal aliens living in your community whose true names and backgrounds are unknown and unknowable? What a perversion of the word "sanctuary" this word play represents!
 
 It has been said that you get only one opportunity to make a first impression. How our nation enforces and administers the immigration laws sends a clear message to millions of people throughout the world. Statements made by the President and other politicians such as Senators Kennedy, Reid, Specter and McCain as well as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, sends the outrageous message that in the United States, law violators cannot only expect to get away with violating our nation's laws, they can and should expect to be rewarded for violating our nation's laws! When local mayors and other politicians declare their cities are sanctuary cities, they amplify that potentially deadly message!
 
 Every city should offer true sanctuary for every law abiding citizen and visitor. Illegal aliens are not law-abiding as the open borders advocates often like to claim. Illegal aliens are, as the name implies, illegally present in our country. In order to seek to work in our country or to conceal their true identities, illegal aliens often commit identity theft. This is also a tactic used by hardcore criminals and terrorists. I have read a number of articles that refer to identity theft as being America's fastest growing white collar crime. I wonder how many of these cases of identity theft were carried out by aliens who had no right to be in the United States in the first place!
 
 The primary responsibility of government on all levels (federal, state or local) is to create a safe and secure environment for the residents who live and/or work within the jurisdiction of that government. When our government fails to deter illegal conduct and, in fact, encourages law violators to move into that jurisdiction, public safety is severely compromised. This past week, while I was doing a radio interview on a radio show that was broadcast in Racine, Wisconsin I listened to a news story that ran during a break in the interview. A group that purported to represent the rights of immigrants (illegal aliens) stated that they did not want the local police to work cooperatively with ICE to stop the "climate of fear" that such cooperation fosters! Think about that statement: they made the assertion that when the police cooperate with ICE, a climate of fear is created. In law enforcement, the goal is to deter criminal and illegal conduct as much as to detect violations of law and punishing those who commit such transgressions. In fact, there are two purposes behind punishing law violators: one, punish the violator. Two, those who might be contemplating committing such violations are generally deterred when others are punished. For example, sobriety check-points are intended to get drunk drivers off the road. They are also intended to keep drivers from driving while drunk.
 
 “We the People” can end sanctuary cities by working together to end the political nonsense of mayors and other officials who show contempt for those who elected them by creating "sanctuaries” for illegal aliens. If the administration were serious about enforcing the immigration laws, they would cut off funding for those towns that refuse to cooperate with ICE. However, the President himself has done everything in his power to hobble efforts to enforce the immigration laws. It is time that those who are seeking the presidency are made to articulate precisely where they stand on the issue of immigration law enforcement. In order to truly enforce the immigration laws and secure our nation's borders, the entire immigration system must be made effective.
 
 
 “We the People” must take our responsibilities as citizens seriously!
 
 Democracy is not a spectator sport!
 
 Lead, follow or get out of the way!
 
 
 FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor Michael Cutler is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a well-respected authority on immigration and border security issues.