Sanctuary cities become new target in immigration debate

From Holly Bailey of Yahoo! News on July 27:

Opponents of the Justice Department's lawsuit challenging the enforcement of Arizona's controversial illegal-immigration law have hit upon a strategy to highlight what they contend is a gaping inconsistency in the Justice Department's policy priorities. Why should federal attorneys be targeting the Arizona law as an alleged obstacle to coherent and centralized enforcement of federal immigration statutes, they argue, while Justice officials also have done nothing to challenge the legal status of so-called sanctuary cities, which effectively block enforcement of the same federal law?

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge in Phoenix to stop Arizona's law from going into effect this Thursday, arguing that the measure interferes with federal immigration policy. But critics, including California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, are challenging the logic of Justice's move, arguing that if U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder really cared about enforcing federal immigration law, he should be targeting sanctuary cities instead of Arizona.

More than 30 cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Denver, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas, have local ordinances on the books that prevent police from asking about a person’s immigration status. The Arizona law would allow officers to question a person’s immigration status and report them to federal authorities if that person is believed to be in the country illegally. The crackdown could prompt illegal immigrants to seek refuge out of Arizona and into those sanctuary cities.

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Click here for a list of sanctuary cities. According to the Ohio Jobs and Justice PAC, sanctuary cities in Florida are:

• DeLeon Springs.
• Deltona.
• Jupiter.
• Lake Worth.
• Miami.