GOP platform targets sanctuary cities

Sunday, August 31, 2008

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(08-31) 04:00 PDT Minneapolis-St. Paul -- Pay attention, San Francisco and other self-proclaimed "sanctuary cities." The draft of 2008 Republican Platform wants cities that flout federal immigration law to pay a price - pocketing fewer federal dollars - for their sanctuary politics.

"The rule of law means guaranteeing to law enforcement the tools and coordination to deport criminal aliens without delay," the draft explains. And: "It means requiring cooperation among federal, state and local law enforcement and real consequences, including the denial of federal funds, for self-described sanctuary cities, which stand in open defiance of the federal and state statutes that expressly prohibit such sanctuary policies, and which endanger the lives of U.S. citizens." (My italics.)

In simple, direct language, the platform also asserts, "We oppose amnesty. The rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity."

These are not the positions of John McCain. McCain supports a path to citizenship for otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens. He won't call it amnesty, but the GOP platform does.

In July, I asked McCain if, as president, he would penalize sanctuary cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration officials. McCain was unfamiliar with Chronicle stories about convicted illegal immigrant crack dealers who had gamed the city's sanctuary policy as it applies to juvenile offenders to avoid being handed over to the feds. One beneficiary of the city's refusal to hand over juvenile felons to the feds - a policy since rescinded by Mayor Gavin Newsom - was Edwin Ramos, who has been charged in the triple murder of Tony Bologna and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. Ramos has pleaded not guilty. The Chronicle's Jaxon Van Derbeken reported Sunday that at least one dealer who claimed to be 16 when arrested in April is, in fact, 25.

McCain's answer: "I would push for federal action to carry out a federal responsibility. And a federal responsibility is immigration. It's not a city or a state or a sheriff's responsibility.

"We fail at the federal level to pass federal legislation, so you're going to have these different activities and different actions by different levels of government, all of which are because of the failure of federal government to enact comprehensive immigration reform."

When I asked if he would withhold federal funds, McCain answered, "I would have to look at the particular situations. First of all, I don't know if I could do it legally, to start with, secondly but I would attack the issue so that it would go away."

And: "You secure borders and you have a temporary worker program that works, you address the issue of the 12 million people who are here illegally, and you don't have to worry about that."

Clearly McCain did not have a big problem with sanctuary city policies in July. Sunday, when I asked the McCain campaign where he stood on the federal penalties on sanctuary cities in light of the GOP platform, a spokesman said he would let the old quotes stand.

California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring told me that he thought the platform made sense because "this is a law enforcement question" and because sanctuary city policies "directly undermine" law enforcement efforts to prosecute international drug and human-smuggling cartels. "In California," Nehring added, "we see this directly."

It turns out that Minneapolis and St. Paul are sanctuary cities. Some American cities passed sanctuary laws for benign reasons - to signal to illegal immigrants that they could report crimes to police and send their children to school - that is to protect otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. It took a city with the loony politics of San Francisco to turn that goal into a get-out-of-jail free card, not for hard-working families, but for savvy drug dealers and brazen convicted felons.

If Republicans could draft a bill that concentrates on withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities that enable career criminals, John McCain would have to get on board.


Sanctuary cities:

While San Francisco gets the press on its sanctuary policies, the movement is widespread, with cities in 25 states proclaiming themselves as sanctuaries.

Sanctuary counties:

Sonoma (Calif.); Rio Ariba (N.M.);

Marion (Ore.); Fairfax (Va.)

Some major sanctuary cities

Anchorage

Phoenix

Chicago

Detroit

New York

Dallas

Minneapolis

St. Paul

California has 28 sanctuary cities, among them:
Fresno

Los Angeles

Oakland

San Diego

Santa Cruz

San Francisco

San Jose

Sanctuary states:

Maine and Oregon

Source: Ohio Jobs & Justice Political Action Committee (links.sfgate.com/ZERU)
http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/articl ... 12LM70.DTL