The shooting of Steinle ignited a firestorm over San Francisco’s sanctuary policy. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made opposition to sanctuary policies a major theme of his campaign. A bill titled the Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act, and nicknamed the Donald Trump Act by Democrats, passed the House on July 23, 2015, and would have blocked sanctuary cities from receiving federal law enforcement funding in response to the shooting.

Since then, public scrutiny of sanctuary cities has grown. For example, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry stated that sanctuary cities “allow illegals to commit crimes, then roam free in our communities,” citing Los Angeles’s spike in crime in 2015 as evidence.

But is really true? Despite popular accounts, decades of research actually shows that immigrants – whether legal or illegal – tend to have lower crime rates.

Now, our new research shows that designating a city as a sanctuary has no statistically significant effect on crime.

We examined all the sanctuary cities listed by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC). All sanctuary cities included in the study passed sanctuary laws during or after 2002. We define a sanctuary as a city that expressly forbids city officials or police departments from inquiring about immigration status.

For each city, we drew on city-level crime data compiled by the FBI by year, as well as a host of demographic and political features that may affect crime levels and/or sanctuary status, such as racial and partisan composition, the unemployment rate, average income levels, the poverty rate, education levels and the percent of the city that is foreign-born.
First, we assessed changes in crime rates at the city level immediately following the passage of a sanctuary policy. Graph 1 reports the results for changes to violent crime in the year immediately following a change in laws for sanctuary cities that have available crime data in the year after the city became sanctuary. (See Graph 1 to the right)

Some cities – such as San Francisco and St. Louis — did see increases in crime immediately following passage. Other cities, such as San Jose, saw no change in crime. Still others — such as Baltimore and Washington — saw a reduction in crime. Taken together, the average change in crime is not statistically significant. The same results hold for property crime and rape crime.
Our second method is more comprehensive. We matched each sanctuary city to a similarly situated non-sanctuary city based on relevant census and political variables. This creates a scenario in which two cities are as similar as possible – with the exception of sanctuary policy – on a variety of features associated with crime rates. If the two comparable cities systematically differ in crime rates, then we can be quite confident that the difference is attributable to the sanctuary designation.

Graph 2 presents our results for violent crime. It compares violent crime rates among sanctuary and non-sanctuary cities from when no cities in our data set were classified as sanctuaries to after all cities had passed their sanctuary policies. (See Graph 2 to the right)

Violent crime is slightly higher in sanctuary cities than non-sanctuary cities. However, judging by the error bands — which capture the uncertainty underlying these estimates — the relationship is not statistically significant before or after a sanctuary policy is passed. We find similar results for property crime and rape.

That is, a sanctuary policy itself has no statistically meaningful effect on crime.

These results make sense if sanctuary city policies have countervailing effects. Given lower crime rates among immigrants, crime rates in sanctuary cities should drop, if those cities do attract new immigrants.
At the same time, sanctuary policies are typically designed to increase trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. Thus, crime reporting — but not crime itself — might actually increase in these locations if undocumented immigrants are more likely to work with police and local authorities.

Taken together, these explanations may explain what we observe in these data: a sanctuary city designation does not produce a significantly higher crime rate.

Trump has pledged that one of the top priorities for his first 100 days in office is to “cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities,” an unspecific term for jurisdictions that limit, in one way or another, their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents.
But with six weeks to go until the inauguration, POLITICO identified not one city that is reconsidering its “sanctuary” policies — such as not asking residents about their immigration status or detaining people solely because of that status — on account of the presidential election.

Instead, officials in at least 37 cities listed below have doubled down since Trump’s election, reaffirming their current policies or practices in public statements, despite the threat of pushback from the incoming administration, and at least four cities have newly declared themselves sanctuary cities since Trump’s win. Ten other cities have said they will wait to see what Trump does but are not currently making any changes, according to local news reports and inquiries from POLITICO.

There is no definitive list of U.S. sanctuary cities because of the term’s flexible definition. The 47 total sanctuary cities POLITICO identified were compiled from multiple sources, including a 2006 Congressional Research Service report, a 2014 Department of Homeland Security report and a 2016 Department of Justice memo. They range from small towns like Aberdeen, Washington, and Ashland, Oregon, to big cities like New York and San Francisco.

Some city officials just don’t take Trump’s threat seriously, while others are openly flouting a president-elect they see as hostile to immigrants. Regardless, legal experts say Trump would have a lot of trouble fulfilling his promise to withhold federal funds.
“It depends on how serious they get, but whatever is going to happen, this is going to end up in court,” said Bill Ong Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and the founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Most local leaders avoid the ambiguous term “sanctuary city,” including Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer, who said he thinks it is somewhat of a misnomer because it implies that such cities offer blanket protection from deportation when that is not the case. In reality, Dyer said Fresno’s policy limits police officers’ cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but they, as in almost every other sanctuary city, still must and do cooperate with federal authorities “when it is to assist them with criminal activity other than immigration status.”

Dyer doubts that Trump will follow through with his threat to withhold funds — and he’s not alone. Leaders of several cities — including Baltimore; Long Beach, California; Mesa, Arizona; and Springfield, Oregon — are satisfied with putting off any conversation about their sanctuary practices until Trump can prove that his funding threat is real. Tyler Gamble, the communications director of the New Orleans Police Department, said the city’s current policies have been approved by the Department of Justice, and he sees no reason to speculate on the future.

Legal experts seem to agree that the Trump administration would have a difficult time enacting the type of defunding it wishes to see. The most basic argument against the federal government’s ability to do that is nested in the Tenth Amendment. “It’s about federalism. It’s about separation of powers,” Hing said. Phil Torrey, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and the supervising attorney of the Harvard Immigration Project, explained that the Tenth Amendment gives broad powers to the states that include the ability to set policy agendas for local law enforcement, while it gives broad powers to the federal government to decide how to tax and spend dollars. The Supreme Court comes in when these powers collide, and the court has established precedent that the federal government cannot be overly coercive, Torrey said.

One such example is South Dakota v. Dole, a 1987 case that clarified what rules Congress must follow when attaching conditions to federal funds. In that case, the court ruled that the federal government could withhold some highway funding from cities that did not enforce the federal drinking age because it wouldn’t be enough money to be considered coercive and because it did not violate the “germaneness rule” since the drinking age condition was determined to be germane to the purpose of the funds: safe interstate travel. That second rule, in particular, will be harder to satisfy with sanctuary cities, Hing argues, because “most federal funds to cities and local governments are not germane to immigration enforcement.”

Another relevant Supreme Court ruling is National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, in which the Supreme Court in 2012 ruled unconstitutional a provision of the Affordable Care Act that would have blocked federal Medicaid funding to states that didn’t accept Obamacare’s proposed Medicaid expansion. Hing suggests that the Supreme Court struck down that provision because it “went too far” and was deemed too coercive.
Torrey said these ruling makes one thing very clear: “What the federal government can’t do at this point is basically pull funding wholesale from states and localities in order to get their local law enforcement agents to basically enforce federal immigration law.” There are, he noted, some Department of Justice grants set aside for local law enforcement that is arguably related to immigration enforcement and “could be at risk.” But Hing said that allotment is equivalent to a drop in the bucket, estimating it to be about $600 million total nationally. For context, San Francisco alone receives more than $1 billion annually in federal funds.

The fact that there’s no clear definition of sanctuary cities means it will be all the more difficult for Trump to implement any sort of defunding, Torrey said. “If the federal government is really looking to do this,” he said, “they’re going to have look at each individual sheriff’s office, and I just think that politically that’s not going to work, and logistically it doesn’t sound tenable at all.”

There are other actions besides the withholding of federal funds that the incoming Trump administration could take to reduce the number of sanctuary cities. Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that favors more restrictive immigration laws, said the most basic action the Trump administration could take is to clarify the expectations and obligations of local law enforcement officials. Vaughan said she believes the Obama administration’s “ambiguity” on ICE detainer requests has left sheriffs confused about their legal liability if they comply with such requests. (In many cities, the ACLU has pursued litigation against county jails that hold undocumented immigrants without court orders.) Vaughan said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, could clarify to those sheriffs that detainer requests are not optional and assure them that they will not face prosecution for assisting ICE.
As for what Vaughan describes as the “most egregious” sanctuary cities — those like Los Angeles or Chicago that openly defy even the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement efforts — she said they will likely lose the Justice Department law enforcement grants that Torrey mentioned and might even face prosecution by the department. It is very likely, she suggested, that the legality of their practices will ultimately be decided by a federal court.

Nevertheless, many leaders are ready to remain steadfast. Mayors or police spokespeople from Aberdeen; Princeton, New Jersey; Northampton, Massachusetts; and Las Vegas all told Politico that they have no plans to reassess their current practices. Similarly, in Ashland, the mayor, the city attorney and the police chief all asserted at a city council meeting on Nov. 17 that they have no intention of changing their sanctuary status because of the election. And in Evanston, an ordinance was adopted just last week that promises the city will remain welcoming to immigrants and limit cooperation with federal immigration officials.
In just the past few weeks, several other cities, including Urbana, Illinois; Northfield, Minnesota; and Pittsburgh, have begun to consider taking steps to formally become sanctuaries in defiance of the president-elect. Santa Ana, California, as well as the Vermont cities of Burlington, Montpelier and Winooski, have already passed resolutions to formalize sanctuary city status since the election.

Trump may have lowered the number of immigrants he hopes to deport from “at least 11 million” to “probably 2 million,” but even then, his administration will have a steep hill to climb without the cooperation of local law enforcement. The top 10 sanctuary cities by undocumented population (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, Newark, Denver, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and San Francisco) account for more than 2 million undocumented immigrants.

Appleton, Wisconsin
Ashland, Oregon
Aurora, Colorado
Austin, Texas
Berkeley, California
Boston, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chicago, Illinois
Denver, Colorado
Detroit, Michigan
Evanston, Illinois
Hartford, Connecticut
Jersey City, New Jersey
Los Angeles, California
Madison, Wisconsin
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Nashville, Tennessee
New Haven, Connecticut
New York, New York
Newark, New Jersey
Newton, Massachusetts
Oakland, California
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix, Arizona
Portland, Oregon
Providence, Rhode Island
Richmond, California
San Francisco, California
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Seattle, Washington
Somerville, Massachusetts
St. Paul, Minnesota
Syracuse, New York
Takoma Park, Maryland
Tucson, Arizona
Washington, D.C.

Santa Ana, California
Burlington, Vermont
Montpelier, Vermont
Winooski, Vermont

It was a largely symbolic gesture, as Boulder already acts as other self-proclaimed sanctuary cities do — that is, it refuses to comply with federal authorities by questioning, detaining or turning over people on the basis of immigration status.

But the council felt it was important to get the policy in place ahead of Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

"We are sending a message of reassurance to people," Mayor Suzanne Jones said.

When the vote was completed, the packed crowd inside the council chambers erupted in cheers.

Trump has threatened to pull federal funding from sanctuary cities. Boulder expects to get about $8 million in federal funding in 2017, which represents about 2 percent of the city's budget for the year.

In an interview ahead of Tuesday's vote, Executive Budget Officer Peggy Bunzli made clear that even if the city loses all $8 million, that won't present an insurmountable hurdle to the basic function of the city.

"Over the years, we've certainly had to deal with dips of that kind," Bunzli said.

With its policy approved Tuesday, Boulder vows that "no city employee shall inquire into a person's immigration status."
City employees also are formally forbidden from cooperating with federal authorities with regard to any investigation of a person's immigration status. Practically, this means that city officials — cops, most importantly — will not be allowed to prompt or assist in Immigration and Customs Enforcement searches.

That's already been the practice of Boulder police, as well as the Boulder County Sheriff's Office and staff of the county jail.

The policy also states that city funds shall not be used to assist with immigration investigations or with the detention of any immigrants.

There is no formal definition of "sanctuary" in this case. Boulder, in fact, was widely considered a sanctuary prior to Tuesday's vote, even though it never had any policy in place.

"Is there anything in here that isn't what we're already doing, exactly?" Councilman Matt Appelbaum asked Tom Carr, the city attorney.

"As a matter of policy," Carr responded, "no."

But dozens of other cities around the country have taken similar action, particularly since Trump's election has stoked fears of deportation.

Councilwoman Mary Young shared a story on Tuesday to highlight why she felt the ordinance was important to pass.

Young and a friend were walking home from the grocery store and were speaking Spanish, Young said, when a man near them turned and said, "Get away from me, you dogs."

The new policy, she said, will help prevent people from being "banished" from this country, separated from family and detained by law enforcement.

"This is what we can do," Young added. "We can't do anything about that hate speech, but we can do something about protecting people."

New York City's Bill de Blasio, Chicago's Rahm Emanuel and Seattle's Ed Murray are among those in "sanctuary cities" that have tried to soothe worried immigrant populations.

"Seattle has always been a welcoming city," Murray said Monday. "The last thing I want is for us to start turning on our neighbors."

In Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Jorge Elorza, the son of Guatemalan immigrants, said he would continue a longstanding policy of refusing to hold people charged with civil infractions for federal immigration officials. Newark, New Jersey's Ras Baraka echoed that decision, calling Trump's rhetoric on immigration "scary."

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times that he's committed to a longtime policy of staying out of immigration issues. Mayor Eric Garcetti has backed that up but stopped short of calling LA a sanctuary city because the term is "ill-defined."

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney restored sanctuary status when he took office in January and said last week the city would protect its residents. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser also said it would keep the status.

During the campaign, Trump gave a speech in which he promised to "end the sanctuary cities" and said those "that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars." He blamed such policies for "so many needless deaths."

Trump didn't elaborate on his plans for cracking down on the cities. In a "60 Minutes" interview broadcast Sunday, he said his administration's priority will be deporting criminals and securing the border.

But significant questions — and unease — remain about his approach to sanctuary cities.

There is no legal definition of the term, which is opposed by some immigration advocates who say it does not reflect that people can still be deported.

It generally refers to jurisdictions that don't cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That can mean, for example, that they don't notify immigration officials when an undocumented immigrant is about to be released from custody.

Some cities, like San Francisco, have long declared themselves safe havens for immigrants, issuing local ID cards to allow them to access government or other services.

The term also been used to refer to cities that bar their employees, including police, from inquiring about a person's immigration status because crime victims and witnesses might be less likely to talk to investigators if they are worried about being deported.

"We don't want anybody to be afraid to talk to us," said Sheriff John Urquhart of Washington's King County, which includes Seattle.

Because states and cities can't be required to enforce federal law — and there's no U.S. requirement that police ask about a person's immigration status — it's likely that any Trump effort to crack down on sanctuary cities would focus on those that refuse to comply with ICE requests, said Roy Beck, chief executive of NumbersUSA, which wants to see immigration levels reduced.

It's also unclear what money Trump might pull. For Congress to impose conditions on federal money heading to the states, the conditions must be related to the funding's purpose, the U.S. Supreme Court has said.

For example, the government threatened to withhold highway funds from any state that failed to adopt a 0.08 blood-alcohol limit: Both the limit and the highway funding were related to road safety.

"If the funding is for improving childhood education, it's hard to say that's reasonably related to local law-enforcement cooperation with deportations," said Mary Fan, a University of Washington law school professor.

However, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general looked at some jurisdictions with sanctuary policies earlier this year and concluded some appear to violate a federal law that says state and local governments may not prohibit or restrict workers from sharing information about a person's immigration status with federal immigration officials.

Having such policies could jeopardize millions of dollars in DOJ grant money the jurisdictions receive, the inspector general's memo said.

About 300 jurisdictions nationwide have sanctuary-like policies, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which calls for lower immigration levels.

"The result is people who should be deported, who have come to the attention of police because of crime, are released back into the community," said Jessica Vaughan, the group's director of policy studies.

A prime example for supporters of a crackdown on sanctuary cities is the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle last year on a San Francisco pier. A man who had been previously deported and had been released by local law enforcement was charged in her death.

Immigrant advocates say they are worried Trump's plans will wind up deporting more than violent criminals and they are gearing up for a fight.

"These cities have reaffirmed they're going to respect the dignity of all their residents," said Matt Adams, legal director at the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. "What they're saying is, 'We're not going to use our resources to separate families, to deport children, to tear communities apart.'"

The word “sanctuary” as Mr. Trump deploys it — a place where immigrant criminals run amok, shielded from the long arm of federal law — is grossly misleading, because cities with “sanctuary” policies cannot obstruct federal enforcement and do not try to. Instead, they do what they can to welcome and support immigrants, including the unauthorized, and choose not to participate in deportation crackdowns they see as unjust, self-defeating and harmful to public safety.
New York City wears that kind of “sanctuary” label proudly. As California considers bold steps to shield its residents from a possible Trump immigration assault, the New York City Council has already built its own strong web of protections. A groundbreaking City Council program has provided free legal representation for children who fled violence in Central America and arrived unaccompanied at the border. Of 1,265 cases accepted under the program, 72 children were granted asylum and 55 obtained lawful permanent residency. The Council has expanded health and legal services in immigrant communities. And it passed bills to keep federal immigration agents out of the Rikers Island jails, and to forbid city police and corrections officers from detaining suspects for deportation, unless there is a judge’s warrant.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who signed both bills, has also promised since the election to defend immigrant residents from other possible threats, like a registry of Muslims and a roundup of unauthorized immigrants. The city will stop saving the personal records of residents who apply for its municipal ID card, to prevent the data from being abused for a deportation purge.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has echoed these sentiments, promising, though without specifics, that New York State will begin expanding legal assistance for immigrants in the coming year. The effort will be welcome should Mr. Trump begin to lower the boom on unauthorized immigrants — though it’s impossible to know the details of what he will do, given the volatility and imprecision of his many immigration-related threats and promises.

Whatever forms the purge takes, the sanctuary forces will have to be resolute in opposition. One good thing: New York and its allies in cities across the country, in governments, schools and churches, will have the public on their side. A recent Global Strategy Group poll found that Americans oppose, 58 percent to 28 percent, repealing President Obama’s DACA program, which shields the young immigrants called Dreamers from deportation. A Quinnipiac poll taken after the election found that Americans strongly support — 72 percent to 25 percent — allowing unauthorized immigrants to stay, with 60 percent supporting a path to citizenship. This support is higher than at any point in the four years it has been asking the question, Quinnipiac said.

Lawson is also joined by Lewis Book, the expedition's base camp doctor, and his daughter Sophana. For several decades, Book has done crisis postings in such war-torn countries as Bosnia and Rwanda only to realize the gradual unraveling of his own family in his native Canada: "A family is its own small country and culture and he has been displaced from his, just a marginal participant in its constant, necessary renewal." Sophana accompanies her father on his latest, seemingly less dangerous engagement in an attempt to restore the ties between father and teenage daughter.

For these characters, the expedition to the Himalayas becomes a test of courage. In the course of the fast-paced narrative, the four Canadians repeatedly need to readjust long-held views and attitudes: "Though Kyatruk is the highest peak in the area, from here it's hidden. A paradox of perspective: how the high peaks you see from fifty miles away vanish behind the lower ones as you near, so getting a view of a mountain is like getting a clear vision of a life--you have to pull away from it before its shape starts to emerge from behind all the concealing layers."

None of the protagonists is left unchanged, and those who eventually return to Canada do not do so unscathed. In the aftermath of the Nangpa La shooting incident, Lewis, Amaris, and later Sophana are taken into custody by Chinese border patrols. The first of the novel's two narrative strands recounts their adventures and their eventual return to freedom. The second, less prominent (though no less important) narrative strand deals with Lawson's abortive attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Kyatruk. Heighton switches back and forth between the two parallel plotlines, makes ample use of cliffhangers, and constantly changes perspectives. This rapid pace is part of the pleasure of reading Every Lost Country. Still, Heighton's writing is even more rewarding in those quiet passages in which he steps back from the action and takes his time to explore his characters and the cadences of their inner worlds, in more detail. Ultimately, it is in these moments that the larger ethical questions which form the backbone of Heighton's novel are explored. Lewis Book, for example, has always known that there is no such thing as a bystander, a lesson he and his fellow travellers do well to remember in Tibet. Steven Heighton's Every Lost Country is both a modern story of adventure set in Tibet and a profound exploration of, to borrow a title by Marilyn Bowering, what it takes to be human.

The link between Every Lost Country and Michael Helm's Cities of Refuge is a shared concern for universal human rights. Helm's third novel takes its title from the Biblical Book of Numbers, in which six cities are designated as places of refuge for anyone who has killed a person without intent. Set in present-day Toronto, Cities of Refuge sheds light on the lives of illegal immigrants in Canada's largest city. Helm's protagonist, twenty-eight-year-old Kim Lystrander, has abandoned her PhD and is working part-time at GROUND, the Group for the Undocumented, where she helps refugee claimants such as the Iranian dissident Sadaf to hide from Canadian authorities. Kim also holds a job at a museum in downtown Toronto and is on her way to work one night when she is brutally attacked by a stranger. Only narrowly does she escape being raped. This act of violence is the novel's key scene. Its various plotlines ripple outward from here. Traumatized by the event, Kim compulsively returns to the attack in her writing. However, Kim's exploration of the past does not stop with her own life: "And so she began retracing the long arc of her life, and the lives of others, and things like chance and the city itself, the zones where lives collided." She soon realizes that she is able to imagine the life of her unknown assailant. For her, this proves to be both a burden and a blessing: "Everything connected. Her attacker has given her this way of seeing, and she hates him for the giving, for the beauty of the gift. It's been forced on her and she will never be free of it. She can't separate the gift from the giver."

Whereas Kim looks for salvation in her writing, her estranged father, the historian Harold Lystrander, pursues a very different course of action. He develops the theory that his daughter must have met her attacker while working at GROUND. His search for clear-cut causes and effects leads him to Rosemary Yates, a social worker who offers sanctuary to illegal immigrants without delving into their distant pasts: "We'd rather that the world made sense somehow, and that's what you're trying to come up with. Sense. Meaning. Sometimes, Harold, there is no meaning." It is Harold's own past that eventually comes under scrutiny when Kim questions his actions during Pinochet's 1973 coup d'etat. Her speculative account of Harold's student days in Chile proves to be disturbing for both father and daughter. Michael Helm's Cities of Refuge is an exceptionally well-crafted and ambitious novel. It is as much a novel about Toronto as it is a novel about a larger globalized world. In it, the personal is intertwined with the political, the past with the present, and the familiar with the unexpected. Like all good literature, Cities of Refuge ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Still, it is the questions that count.

Bolling, Gordon. "In Search of Sanctuary." Canadian Literature, no. 213, 2012, p. 170. Literature Resource Center, ezpvcc.vccs.edu:2048/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=LitRC&sw=w&u=viva2_vccs&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA311293188&it=r&asid=38c97c3e96426cf1dfbb74fcf6fb68a6. Accessed 20 Jan. 2017.

“We will end the sanctuary cities that have caused so many needless deaths,” he said. “No more funds!”

Trump was referring to the scores of cities and counties across the United States that limit their cooperation with federal authorities when asked to detain undocumented immigrants. And he promised, if elected president, to cut their federal funding if they refused to comply.

Since Trump’s election victory last week, mayors and police chiefs in more than 10 major cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., reaffirmed their commitment to upholding their sanctuary polices, even in the face of federal threats.

“Oaklanders can rest assured that our government will continue to protect all its residents and defend our progressive values,” wrote Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, in a letter published Monday in the East Bay Express. We’ll proudly stand as a sanctuary city – protecting our residents from what we deem unjust federal immigration laws – fight all forms of bigotry and advance our commitment to equity even more passionately.”

The national debate over sanctuary cities resurfaced in 2015 when an undocumented immigrant with a long criminal history allegedly shot and killed a 32-year-old woman on a San Francisco pier.

Advocates of tougher immigration rules were quick to blame the city for its policy of not cooperating with federal immigration agencies to hold and report potentially dangerous undocumented residents.

An estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants currently reside in the United States.

Before we dig in, two important details to keep in mind about the term “sanctuary city”:

1. There’s no official legal definition, and what it means can vary significantly from place to place.

2. It’s become a pretty loaded term, often used derisively by advocates of tougher immigration restrictions.

Again, the definition can vary widely. Generally, though, the label refers to localities that help shield undocumented residents from deportation by refusing to fully cooperate with detention requests from federal immigration authorities. Most take a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach with their residents. Local policies range from nonbinding resolutions and police department orders (like in Los Angeles) to enforceable municipal ordinances (like in San Francisco).

Depends who you ask.

A 2006 Congressional Research Service report  listed 32 counties and cities with explicit sanctuary ordinances. A number of cities have adopted similar resolutions since then, including Berkeley, Oakland and East Palo Alto.

In an analysis of data from Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the New York Times tallied 39 cities and 364 counties across the country that in some way limit how much local law enforcement can cooperate with federal detention requests. It’s unclear, however, how much action some of these jurisdictions have taken, other than officially expressing opposition (that may not be legally binding) to what they consider harsh federal or state immigration laws.

And organizations in some municipalities even challenge the label. In 2011, for instance, the Los Angeles Times editorial board denied that Los Angeles was a sanctuary city, even though in 1979 the city had enacted a measure to prevent local police from inquiring about the immigration status of those arrested, one of the first cities in the country to do so.

Four states —  California,  Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut —  have also enacted ordinances in recent years that limit compliance with federal immigration officials.

A least ncie Oregon counties in 2014 stopped complying with ICE requests to hold undocumented immigrants in jail for the sole purpose of deportation. The change came after a federal judge ruled that one of those counties violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by detaining her without probable cause. Some legal experts say the ruling may spur more local sanctuary policies across the state and possibly nationwide.
What’s the history?

The roots of the modern sanctuary movement date back to the 1980s. U.S. churches, synagogues and other religious institutions began to provide refuge and services to thousands of undocumented immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador who had fled civil unrest at home but were denied sanctuary in the U.S., largely due to Cold War politics.

The effort became known as the Sanctuary Movement, and as it spread, a number of cities throughout the country joined in solidarity, passing resolutions to overlook the immigration status of residents.

Supporters argue that cities have bigger public safety priorities and too few resources to handle immigration enforcement. Additionally, many local policymakers and law enforcement agencies argue that immigration enforcement is not their responsibility, and that cracking down on undocumented residents would undermine community relations, disrupt services and dissuade those residents from cooperating with crime prevention effort. They also note that none of their protective policies in any way prevent local police from pursuing immigrants suspected of committing crimes.

Trump is among a large number of mostly Republicans opposed to sanctuary policies, arguing that they encourage illegal immigration, undermine federal enforcement efforts and severely compromise public safety, resulting in crimes that could have been avoided through deportation.

Whereas the majority of sanctuary cities don’t ask residents about their immigration status and refuse to share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), San Francisco is among a handful of localities that take things a bit further.

The City and County of Refuge ordinance, adopted in 1989, prohibits the city from using any “funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or to gather or disseminate information regarding the immigration status” of residents unless explicitly required by federal or state law or court order.

The motion was further emphasized by a 2007 executive directive prohibiting city employees or agencies from assisting in any ICE investigation, detention or arrest proceeding unless required by federal law. And a section in the city’s administrative code prevents any city law enforcement officer from detaining an individual “on the basis of a civil immigration detainer after that individual becomes eligible for release from custody.”

Similar to other sanctuary cities, exceptions apply to individuals convicted of violent felonies within the past seven years or in custody for another violent felony.

It’s these policies that came under fire following the murder of Kate Steinle. Suspect Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had already been convicted of felonies and deported multiple times, was transferred from a federal prison to the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department for an outstanding warrant dating back to his arrest for marijuana possession in San Francisco two decades ago. In March, the case was dismissed.

The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department released Lopez-Sanchez without complying with ICE’s request to be notified prior to his release.

Although Mayor Kenney has thankfully come forward to state his intention to keep Philadelphia a sanctuary for our immigrant communities, there has been a great deal of backlash. Naysayers are stoking fears of felonious undocumented immigrants roving about town recklessly committing crimes with no recourse. This just simply isn't the case. Our sanctuary status means we don't detain on behalf of the federal government immigrants who have violated federal immigration laws.

In fact, sanctuary status can actually lower the crime rate — when undocumented immigrants feel they cab call the police without fear of investigation into their immigration status, they are more likely to report crimes. And this of course goes beyond calling the police when something's amiss. This mutual trust can also help people feel more connected to their community.

But sometimes, appealing to reason doesn't work. So we'll appeal to emotion, too. We need to remember that part of the reason so many new Philadelphians, documented and otherwise, have chosen to make this their home is its rich diversity and openness. We come here from farms, towns, and cities, from outside of national borders or from just over the bridge. We are entrepreneurs, teachers, lawyers, union members, and service industry workers. We came here with the hopes of improving our stations in life, and contributing to the fabric of Philadelphia. Thanks to our diverse residents, that fabric is increasingly interwoven, complex, and beautiful.

As Philadelphians, we're known for grit and determination. We don't back down from our convictions. Now is not the time to start because of threats — especially when our friends and neighbors could suffer the consequences of our silence. Many fellow sanctuary cities have come forward to reject Trump's proposed actions, so let's continue to stand with them in solidarity. Beyond voicing your support and thanking Mayor Kenney for his actions thus far, you can also get involved directly with organizations fighting for the rights of our immigrant communities, such as Juntos or New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.

If this city is to become a true world-class city — which we aspire to be — we need to continually foster the diversity and inclusion that is integral to urban vitality. Do we really want to be the kind of city that closes its doors on the ideals that are the very foundation of this country? When we look back on this era of American politics, we hope to see that our city stood up for and supported all of its residents.