President Donald Trump has recently signed an executive order stating that federal grant money will be withheld from any sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are places where undocumented immigrants can stay without fear of being deported.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego are just a few of the cities in California that are considered sanctuary cities. The New York Times reported that the mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, said during a press conference that he believes sanctuary cities are safer and that it opens up communication between law enforcement and society.
Mayor Lee emphasized the cities would become less safe if there is less cooperation with law enforcement.
In big cities, immigrants are often the ones living in more dangerous areas and without their assured safety around the police, crime will begin to rise.
San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, has filed an injunction against Trump’s administration for their attempt to withhold federal grants from sanctuary cities. Federal grants are used by cities to carry out the public purpose of support or stimulation and without these funds, cities could be majorly impacted.
At a news conference Herrera said, “You can’t put a gun to the head of states and localities to get them to comply with what you might want at the federal level.”
Herrera also argued that the order is unconstitutional and will turn city and state workers into federal enforcers.
This executive order is not the only one alienating immigrants in the U.S. Recently, President Trump signed another executive order that banned immigrants from seven different countries from entering the U.S. for 120 days. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia all made it on the banned list. This ban includes people with green cards and visas.
The United States is a country that was established by immigrants. Most Americans are not indigenous to the U.S. and had family that immigrated at some point in time. This makes the executive ban order unethical.
During President Trump’s campaign, he often used an example of a shooting in San Francisco to justify his radical views on immigration. In this shooting, a 32-year old woman was shot on a San Francisco Pier. The shooter was a man who was released from a Bay Area jail after a few short months. The shooter had already been deported to Mexico five times before the shooting. President Trump accuses the cities for not turning the man over to the federal immigration officers after releasing him.
Because of San Francisco’s sanctuary city standing, they do not have policies forcing them to turn illegal immigrants over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Trump has mostly focused on this executive ban order as a means of terrorism prevention and targeted predominantly Muslim countries. According to the New America Foundation, jihadists have killed 95 people in the U.S. in a ten year period, whereas 301,797 people were killed by guns within the U.S. during that same time period according to Politifact.
A study done by the Cato Institute explained that Americans are 253 times more likely to be killed in a homicide than a terrorist attack by a foreigner.
Therefore, President Trump’s executive ban order and defunding of sanctuary cities is not actually lowering the acts of violence that can be found in large cities, it is only making them less safe and targeting the wrong groups of people.
