Sanctuary Map Update: 170+ New Locations Added

The new episode of the Center for Immigration Studies’ podcast, Parsing Immigration Policy, focuses on the Center’s updated map of sanctuary jurisdictions, based on data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Joining host Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center, is Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy studies, who explains her update of the map.

The update adds about 170 new sanctuary locations, mostly counties (including regional jails) as well as some cities. Some of these newly listed sanctuaries are in states that prohibit such policies, such as South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, and North Carolina.

Virginia, North Dakota, Nebraska, New York, and Minnesota have seen the most significant increases in sanctuary policies.

The Center's updated map is based on ICE's internal tracking, adding information from the document entitled "Detainer Acceptance Tracker – Limited and Non-Cooperative Institutions," obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The Center’s map is a collaboration between Vaughan and multimedia director Bryan Griffith, and has been used to track sanctuaries since 2015, using ICE information and open sources.

Since then, well over 10,000 deportable criminal aliens who were arrested by local authorities for state and local crimes have been released back to the streets due to sanctuary policies, despite ICE seeking custody with a detainer, and a significant share have committed subsequent crimes. For example, in a documented eight-month period during 2014-2015, about 1,800 of 8,000 criminal aliens released by sanctuary jurisdictions were rearrested for committing 7,500 new crimes.

“It is alarming to see the continued proliferation of sanctuary policies, especially in places like Virginia,” Vaughan notes, “where ICE has had to use its scarce resources to re-arrest violent gang members and rapists in our communities who were set free by local jails, when they should have been transferred directly to ICE custody for a plane ride home.”

Vaughan continued: “Federal and state lawmakers should adopt measures to better ensure that local law enforcement agencies cooperate with ICE, and to penalize those agencies that choose not to cooperate.”

In his closing commentary, Krikorian discusses the Democratic Party’s 2024 immigration platform introduced this week at the party’s convention. The platform embraces the U.S. Citizenship Act, a radical piece of legislation introduced in January 2021, that would have granted amnesty to all illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of January 2021 and even allowed the return of many previously deported illegal immigrants. This position contrasts sharply with the Republican position on immigration enforcement, setting the stage for an unambiguous policy debate.

Host

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Guest

Jessica Vaughan is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Related

Sanctuary Map

Justice Department Still Funding Sanctuaries

Are Immigrants Less Willing to Report Crime?

Background and Likely Effects of the Biden-Menendez Amnesty Bill

The 2024 Democratic Party Platform

Intro Montage

Voices in the opening montage:

• Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.
• Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.
• President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.
• Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.
• Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.
• Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.
• Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.
• Prof. George Borjas in a 2016 C-SPAN appearance.
• Sen. Jeff Sessions in 2008 comments on the Senate floor.
• Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes".