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Setting the Record Straight About Sanctuary Policies

January 23, 2025 (1 min read)

NIPNLG, Jan. 22, 2025

"Recently, America First Legal sent letters to various state and local officials across the country, wrongly and deceptively arguing that sanctuary policies are not only illegal in spite of clear law saying that they are, but also unethically threatening criminal prosecution based on wholly unheard-of theories of criminal liability that have no grounding in existing law. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, formerly one of President Trump’s New York criminal defense attorneys, similarly issued a memo vaguely calling for such prosecutions as well as legal action against sanctuary jurisdictions (“the DOJ memo”). Despite these threats, however, the fact remains that sanctuary policies are not illegal. Rather, sanctuary policies are not only entirely legal, they are also one piece of a smart and constitutional approach to policing designed to serve all members of a community. These bullying tactics from the Trump Administration and its allies are not new. State and local officials should see these letters and this memo for what they are – nothing more than attempts to intimidate, coerce, and extort them – and disregard these blatant scare tactics as worth little more than the paper they are written on."