Police chiefs, sheriff resist immigration role

A group of 63 police chiefs and sheriffs from across the country, who formed a Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force in 2015, has issued a letter saying they do not want their officers acting as federal immigration officers and do not want to lose federal funding if their cities and counties are defined as immigrant “sanctuaries.”

The letter is a response to President Donald Trump’s executive order in January on “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” which calls for increased use of local law enforcement to perform immigration checks. The order threatened to withhold federal grant money from sanctuary cities and counties.

The letter is not addressed to the president but rather to members of the Senate, and it is signed by the chiefs of Orlando, Houston, Boston, Seattle, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles County as well as smaller jurisdictions such as Marshalltown, Iowa, and Garden City, Kan.

“We believe,” the letter states, “that we can best serve our communities by leaving the enforcement of immigration laws to the federal government. Threatening the removal of valuable grant funding from jurisdictions that choose not to spend limited resources enforcing federal immigration law is extremely problematic.”

The chiefs’ task force was launched and is supported by the National Immigration Forum.