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Federal and state officials are eyeing legislation that would allow state officials to punish local officials for following so-called “sanctuary cities” policies that encourage non-cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removal requests.
Sanctuary cities limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal authorities concerning requests to remove illegal immigrants accused of misdemeanor or felony crimes.
On a federal level, Republican U.S. lawmakers on Jan. 25 re-introduced legislation called the “Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act” that would allow victims harmed by illegal immigrant crime to sue sanctuary cities.
“Sanctuary cities have shielded many of the nearly 650,000 criminal illegal immigrants in the United States from facing the consequences for their violent crimes against innocent Americans for too many years,” North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards said in a statement last month. “Sanctuary cities cannot continue to jeopardize Americans’ safety without being held accountable for their role in the illegal immigrant crime crisis we are facing today.”
José Gustavo Arocha, senior fellow at the national security think tank The Center for a Secure Free Society, told Fox News Digital that they “harm the community” by offering a safe shelter to criminal illegal immigrants like members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA)
Arocha was a lieutenant colonel from the Venezuelan Army who fled the country in 2015.
Map of Tren de Aragua presence in the United States as of December 2024. (Fox News Digital)
TdA members “look for places where they control the territory,” he said, where there is “no communication with ICE” and gang members “can control the communication.”
“[Gang members] think about sanctuary cities will let them get away with more criminal activity.”
“People live here in the United States because of the rule of law. It means safety and freedom,” Arocha said, adding that there is overlap between some sanctuary cities and cities that voted to “defund the police” in 2020.
Arocha added that to uphold the rule of law in the United States, there needs to be “communication between institutions,” otherwise businesses, families and legal immigrants will suffer the consequences of illegal immigrants who commit crimes but are not detained by ICE.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano and Madison Colombo contributed to this report.