Sanctuary Cities: The Reason Illegal Aliens are Getting Away with Crimes?

Abstract

The question remains: what is preventing authorities from following federal legislation? Likewise, where does the system fail, allowing for criminal aliens to escape deportation? It is no coincidence that these crimes occurred in cities and towns that promote sanctuary policies. Sanctuary cities prevent the adequate cohesion between local law enforcement and federal officials. In Section II, this note will discuss what sanctuary cities are and how and why they are created. Next, section III will detail the history of immigration legislation in the United States, pre- and post-9/11. Section IV will then analyze why federal legislation and immigration laws preempt sanctuary city policies and will look at the case law that supports the preemption. Section V discusses the harms of sanctuary cities, focusing specifically upon the vast amount of crimes occurring at the hands of illegal aliens, including gang crime and sex offenses. It will center on why sanctuary cities, through their passive measures, permit illegal immigrants to continue violating criminal laws in addition to being here illegally. The fact that many criminal illegal immigrants are repeat offenders, once subject to the hands of the authorities, compels the public to ask how this happens. This section will also examine the arrest procedure of an illegal immigrant and what should happen at the state and local level. And finally, Section VI and VII examine possible solutions to prevent criminal aliens from slipping through the cracks of the legal system and harming American citizens. This note does not attempt to discuss a possible solution to the illegal immigration problem that the country faces, but focuses more on illegal immigrants who are committing crimes over and over again, in part because they are not being reported to ICE, are not being denied bail, and ICE and state and local authorities are not provided with the appropriate resources and funding to handle such a tremendous amount of illegal immigrant cases.