Contact: Timothy Svoboda, (202) 225-2476
(Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Glenn Grothman (WI-06) has reintroduced the Ending Sanctuary Cities Act to the 117th Congress. This bill will prevent state and local governments that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities from receiving any federal grants. It would also protect state and local governments from federal or state lawsuits brought by illegal aliens. In addition, any law enforcement officer following federal immigration law would be protected from discharge or discrimination from any state or local government with a sanctuary policy.
“Our job is to keep Americans safe and our country secure, and so-called sanctuary cities impede our ability to do just that,” said Grothman. “Not enforcing our current immigration laws is a public safety issue. We need to hold states accountable for disobeying federal immigration laws and harboring criminal illegal aliens who sometimes turn out to be criminals.
“It is more important now than ever to reestablish control of our country’s immigration system. Since President Biden took office, illegal border crossings have skyrocketed. The surge can be traced back to his politically motivated executive orders to stop construction of the border wall system, canceling the agreement with Mexico to hold asylum seekers in Mexico as they await a trial, and his squishy immigration rhetoric that has led some to believe our borders are open.
“The Ending Sanctuary Cities Act will help keep American citizens safe from criminal illegal aliens. This bill will also help law enforcement agents around the country, as well as border patrol agents, by eliminating the incentive to cross the border illegally in hopes of gaining access to a jurisdiction that will not report this illegal behavior.
“If the Biden administration is going to put politics over people, Congress must do its job to ensure Americans do not continue to fall victim to criminal illegal aliens shielded by sanctuary jurisdictions.”
Background
Interior immigration enforcement is necessary to uphold our nation’s laws and is critical to ensuring public safety. When criminal illegal aliens are arrested and determined to be inadmissible or removable from the United States, they should be turned over to immigration enforcement officials. Yet, sanctuary jurisdictions across the country shield these criminal illegal aliens by not cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and declining to comply with lawfully issued detainers. These dangerous criminals are then released back into communities, putting innocent American lives at risk.
We know all too well the tragic stories of Americans falling victim to criminal illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions. Take the case of a 16-year-old girl who was murdered outside Baltimore in May 2020. Five suspects associated with MS-13 were charged with her murder, two of which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had previously issued detainers on. As the Acting Baltimore Field Office Director Francisco Madrigal put it, “this is the worst-case scenario when detainers are not honored”.
Sanctuary jurisdictions should not be rewarded with federal funds when they refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement officials. In 2017, President Trump issued an executive order stating that federal grants shall not be awarded to sanctuary jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with federal immigration law. On day one, President Biden overturned this executive order and subsequently, the Department of Justice ended its policy of conditioning grant funding on cooperation with federal immigration authorities. This comes after then-Senator Biden called for a ban on sanctuary cities.
The Ending Sanctuary Cities Act has nine original cosponsors: Randy Weber (R-TX), Rick Allen (R-GA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Gregory Steube (R-FL), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), Billy Long (R-MO), John Joyce (R-PA), Mary Miller (R-IL), and Mark Green (R-TN).
Grothman also introduced the Ending Sanctuary Cities Act in the 116th Congress.
The term “criminal illegal alien” refers to non-citizens who are in the U.S. illegally and have prior criminal charges or convictions and not to illegal or undocumented immigrants as a whole.
