Willis Eschenbach has a wonderful analysis of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' Press Briefing:
8 U.S. Code 1373
Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke at the White House Press Briefing a week or so ago. His subject was sanctuary cities. As I’ve written before, I think that sanctuary cities are discriminating against the American felon. Foreign criminals get special treatment that the sanctuary cities deny to American criminals. How can that possibly be legal?
I also think that letting illegal foreign criminals of any stripe go free is madness. Fortunately, President Trump is already ending the “catch-and-release” policy of Comrade Obama.
In any case, I was intrigued by the Attorney General’s reference to “8 USC 1373” as being the relevant statute. The “USC” part stands for “United States Code”, meaning Federal law codes. The odd part was that he mentioned 8 USC 1373 a couple times in his speech. To me, that was a giant red flag. He was semaphoring a message, and I wondered what it was.
Willis quotes the law in question: 8 U.S. Code § 1373 and offers this:
As I said, I was surprised. Nothing to do with felons, or letting people out of prison. What this says is that you cannot prohibit or restrict any government entity or office or individual from COMMUNICATING with ICE. And that is regardless of any other provision of Federal, State or Local law.
The reason that I think that this is highly significant is that when they are enunciated, the sanctuary city specifically prohibits communication with ICE … the very act that is made illegal under 8 USC 1373.
My conclusion from this? I am not a lawyer, but the San Francisco Sanctuary City Ordinance certainly seems to be in violation of 8 USC 1373. The City is clearly restricting its employees from communicating with ICE.
Curious - an excellent choice of a law to enforce. Convict and sentence a couple city officials and watch everyone else fall in line.
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