From the beginning of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s tough immigration stance was a pillar of his candidacy and later, his presidency. The Republican nominee highlighted tragedies caused by illegal immigrants who broke the law and left Americans dead in their wake. The villains, according to then-candidate and now President Trump, are the so-called “Sanctuary Cities” that permit undocumented immigrants to reside in their locales without actively supporting federal immigration authorities in their deportation efforts. The term “sanctuary cities” is one that has its origins among immigration activists.

The Supreme Court recently declined to hear the Trump administration’s legal challenge of California’s sanctuary laws. By refusing to take up the case, the Court will permit the state’s laws, including the California Values Act, to remain in place. The decision not to hear the appeal is a setback for the president and a win for California on one of the Trump administration’s signature issues.

Sanctuary Cities: Origins

Sanctuary cities are jurisdictions where local law enforcement departments hold back active cooperation with federal immigration officers. Police in such cities often will not share the immigration status of people they arrest with officers working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Sanctuary cities date back to the 1980s when civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala led to an influx of refugees in the United States. The Reagan administration referred to the refugees as “economic migrants” and did not grant asylum to most of them. Many religious organizations disagreed with the administration’s characterization and provided various forms of aid to the refugees.

In 1989, San Francisco became the first American city to officially enact a sanctuary policy. Under San Francisco’s ordinance, the city limited the use of its funds and resources to aid federal immigration efforts.

Three decades later, there are more than 150 sanctuary cities and counties throughout the country.

Controversy and Constitutional Issues Surrounding Sanctuary Cities

While sanctuary policies vary by location, one of the more common approaches is to oppose the requests of federal immigration agencies for prolonged detention of individuals suspected of violating immigration laws. ICE will ask for a “detainer” of a suspect in local custody. When this occurs, ICE is effectively asking that the police in a city, state, or county hold an individual for 48 hours beyond the point in time when they would otherwise be released. The delayed release gives the federal officers time to arrest the suspected immigration violator and possibly deport the individual.

Some who oppose complying with ICE do so because they claim that the requests for detainers are constitutional violations. Police departments in these jurisdictions sometimes question the move to jail individuals for ICE detainers when they have no warrant. Courts have confirmed that the hesitation in detaining such individuals is valid. In 2014, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that a woman’s constitutional rights were violated when police, who were cooperating with ICE, held her past the point in time she was meant to be released.

The main constitutional argument used in California’s defense is based on states’ rights under the 10th Amendment. The precedent for that argument comes from a 1997 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia titled Printz v. United States. In that decision, the Supreme Court stated that the federal government could not legally force states to conduct background checks on firearm purchasers, as this would be forcing states to carry out a federal regulatory program.

The Department of Justice in the current California case has argued that the federal immigration law must be controlling over California’s because of the Supremacy Clause. In support of this position, attorneys pointed to a decision in which the court struck down Arizona’s aggressive immigration laws as an intrusion on federal immigration policy.

The federal appellate court for the Ninth Circuit sided with California in the case, United States of America v. State of California, prompting the Department of Justice to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined to accept the case, denying the federal government’s petition for certiorari.

Policy Arguments

In the 2016 elections, the battle over sanctuary cities became highly politicized. The Trump campaign took a strict stance on immigration and blamed sanctuary cities for the tragic death of 32-year-old Kate Steinle. The young woman died in a shooting while visiting a tourist destination in San Francisco. Despite being deported five times and having been in custody only months before the shooting, the man who killed Steinle was not deported following his most recent stay in police custody. Trump argued that San Francisco’s immigration policy was to blame.

Critics of Trump’s hardline stance point to statistics indicating that American citizens are more likely to commit crimes than are immigrants. Studies also suggest that sanctuary policies are either irrelevant when it comes to reducing crime or that they may only slightly reduce crime rates.

Law enforcement officers who are in favor of sanctuary policies argue that investigating a crime is more difficult when the public does not trust the police. When police officers hold suspects for ICE, many people in immigrant communities will be reluctant to serve as witnesses or report crimes. These officers believe that cities are less secure when people are afraid to interact with the police.

Other officers see the situation differently and feel that working with the federal government to get dangerous criminals out of the country is the best way to keep the public safe. In California, some officers complain that the state’s sanctuary laws negatively impact the relationship between local departments and federal immigration officers.

Trump Administration Attacks Sanctuary Cities in California

In 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued California for its sanctuary policies, which consist of a series of laws passed in 2017 under the bill numbers SB 54, AB 450 and AB 103. The basis of the complaint was that the Constitution dictates that federal laws are superior to state laws.

The laws which the administration challenged prevent cooperation between private employers and federal immigration officers and do not allow local police to share information with the federal officers if it pertains to the release from custody of immigrants. However, under SB 54, local law enforcement must still notify ICE if an immigrant in their custody is convicted of a violent felony.

Under AB 450, employers must notify their employees before federal immigration inspections. California’s AB 103 allows the state attorney general to inspect immigration facilities.

The federal district judge and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals both found in favor of California, stating that while the federal agents will have a harder job because of SB 54 and the other laws, the policies do not impede law enforcement. In essence, California cannot actively hinder immigration officers, but California’s officers are not obligated to perform work to make federal immigration officers’ jobs easier. The DOJ appealed the decision to the nation’s top court, but the majority of justices voted not to hear the case. Without the Supreme Court weighing in on the issue, California’s sanctuary cities and policies will remain in place, and the decision of the Ninth Circuit will continue to stand.