One day before ultra-liberal Democrat Seattle Mayor Ed Murray grabbed the national spotlight by filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration over threats to withhold federal grant funds from so-called “sanctuary cities,” a Massachusetts sheriff told Congress that leaders of such cities should be arrested.
According to CBS News, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson told the House Subcommittee on Illegal Immigration bluntly that, “If these sanctuary cities are going to harbor and conceal criminal illegal aliens from ICE, which is in direct violation of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, federal arrest warrants should be issued for their elected officials. Our citizens would be safer if we never stopped enforcing immigration law and if we never formed or turned a blind eye toward sanctuary cities.”
A Boston Globe profile of the sheriff suggested that he’s controversial. But what Hodgson said Tuesday seems to be hitting a nerve with many critics of “sanctuary cities.”
Wednesday afternoon, Murray – a Democrat who has a long history of advocating tough gun laws and requiring full adherence to those laws – contended during a press conference that his vow of defiance against President Donald Trump’s executive order on illegal immigration is okay because, in his opinion, it is unconstitutional to require local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. Murray cited the 10th Amendment in defense of his position.
There was more than just a little irony in that. It was precisely that argument in Printz v. U.S., the 1997 Supreme Court ruling, which struck down parts of the Brady gun control law as unconstitutional.
When Murray insisted that, “We value civil rights,” Second Amendment activists argued that his sentiment doesn’t extend to all civil rights. Seattle is being sued by the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation and two retail gun dealers over the city’s “gun violence tax,” adopted hastily in 2015.
Murray contended that, according to data, “crime rates drop in immigrant communities.”
Sheriff Hodgson on Tuesday said quite the opposite, that sanctuary cities “have become magnets for illegal aliens, some of which have violent criminal records.
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