Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson issued a statement Wednesday that all but assures sanctuary cities such as Seattle will continue to ignore or defy Federal Immigration laws.

In the wake of President Trump vowing to pull federal funding for cities that 'ignore' or covertly protect illegal immigrants from deportation, Ferguson issued the following statement:

"I am deeply troubled by the President’s Executive Order today regarding sanctuary jurisdictions. His order raises significant legal issues that my office will be investigating closely to protect the constitutional and human rights of the people of our state."

In short, he is hinting they will be looking for legal loopholes or other ways to defy federal law.  According to the Washington Examiner, there are at least 300 sanctuary cities. The Examiner, citing data from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), says at least 17,000 illegal aliens were allowed to remain, despite receiving detainer notices from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These figures are over the last 19 months.

A 'detainer' is an official request or notice from the federal government to a city requesting they apprehend a certain individual for violations, or a notice that ICE or US Marshalls (or other law enforcement) are coming after that person.

These sanctuary cities either ignore the request, or in some cases, actually allow the person to take refuge in a church or with other groups who 'protect' and hide them from ICE.  Of these 17,000, CIS says over 11,000 were sought because of a prior criminal history.  It is well documented the number of these illegals who were later found to have committed a wide variety of crimes, from drugs to even murder.

Seattle is considered a sanctuary city.  By not assisting federal agencies in pursuing known illegals, or by hindering their apprehension, sanctuary cities are actually indirectly or directly breaking federal law. That's why there's been the new threat to pull federal funding if this practice continues.

According to CIS Director Jessica Vaughn, some of the practices of these cities include:

  • passing laws that obstruct, hinder or prohibit ICE from contact with illegals
  • refusing or prohibiting local law enforcement from complying with ICE requests
  • imposing unreasonable demands in order to accept detainer requests
  • and even denying ICE officials access to jailed illegals and impeding communication efforts between the federal government and local law enforcement.

In other words, many of these cities are guilty of what experts say is obstruction of justice at the very least.  It sounds as if our State AG is going in that direction.

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