Campaign Action
In the red state of Arizona, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus knows that when immigrant residents trust local law enforcement officers, they are more likely to report crime, which makes the entire community safer. But this supposed pro-police and “law and order” presidential administration has attempted to strong-arm local police departments over pro-immigrant policies, including threatening to withhold federal dollars unless they fully cooperate with Donald Trump’s mass deportation force, oftentimes in unconstitutional ways. Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III not only make cities less safe, they are undermining police by making their jobs harder to do. “The Trump administration seems to think it knows more about fighting crime than local police chiefs and sheriffs,” writes Chief Magnus, “and it is punishing cities that keep their officers focused on community needs rather than federal immigration enforcement”:
As the police chief here, I’m deeply troubled by the Trump administration’s campaign against “sanctuary cities,” which refuse to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities. Washington is trying to retaliate against them by withholding funding for things like crime prevention, drug treatment and mental health programs.
Tucson is not technically a sanctuary city. But we are close to the border with Mexico and take pride in being welcoming to immigrants. Yet the government has warned us that our grants are in danger.
Still, while federal judges in Chicago and San Francisco have ruled against President Trump’s executive order to withhold money from sanctuary cities, the administration’s crackdown on immigrants is already having a chilling effect on police-community relations here. Many community members have told me that Latinos are not turning to us for help or working with us as often as they have in the past.
“Their growing sense of fear and distrust is clearly a consequence of the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” Chief Magnus writes.
Magnus goes on to rebut the administration’s claim that immigrants have been responsible for an uptick in crime—research shows that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born Americans to commit crime—and writes that Sessions’ “rush to undermine crime-reduction initiatives put in place under past administrations is damaging police-community relationships and dismantling valuable public safety resources. It has effectively abandoned collaborative “reform agreements” to help police departments mend or improve relationships with the communities they serve”:
The message from Washington is that cities need to refocus on “law and order.” Yet the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mr. Sessions’s reckless policies ignore a basic reality known by most good cops and prosecutors: If people are afraid of the police, if they fear they may become separated from their families or harshly interrogated based on their immigration status, they won’t report crimes or come forward as witnesses.
When crime victims and witnesses are unwilling to testify because they’re afraid an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent will be waiting to arrest them at the courtroom doors, real criminals go unpunished. It means drug dealers and people who commit domestic and sexual violence are free to exploit a voiceless class of victims; such criminals become a threat to us all.
It’s a simple formula. When crimes go unreported and unsolved, criminals are empowered.
Already, anti-immigrant policies and sentiments from the Trump administration are having devastating effects, and it’s exactly what local law enforcement like Magnus have been warning about. “During a press conference in early April, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo announced a 42.8 percent drop in the number of Latinos reporting rape to his department compared to the same period last year”:
“When you see this type of data, and what looks like the beginnings of people not reporting crime, we should all be concerned,” Acevedo said at a news conference, as reported by the Houston Chronicle. “A person that rapes or violently attacks or robs an undocumented immigrant is somebody that is going to harm a natural born citizen or lawful resident.”
In March, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Berk said that his department experienced a 25 percent drop in reports of sexual assault among the Latino population, with reports of domestic violence falling 10 percent.
Those statistics follow reports of crime victims who have withdrawn requests to seek restraining orders against alleged abusers out of fear that they could be arrested by ICE agents at the courthouse.
“Tucson has come too far to jeopardize reforms that strengthen relationships with the public we serve,” Magnus concludes. “Justice Department grants and other federal support funded through our taxes should not be tied to immigration policies. Holding the needs of state and local law enforcement hostage to politics ultimately works against the interests of safety and justice.”