The Sanctuary City Initiative is well-intentioned, and we very often agree with its drafters on issues of social justice and protecting people’s civil rights. But the Sanctuary City Initiative is overly broad and does not make Tucson a safer community.
The Initiative will prohibit the City from conducting joint operations with the FBI, BATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals and the Secret Service. That directly affects our ability to work with those agencies on rape analysis, fingerprint analysis, drug interdiction and numerous other significant criminal investigations.
That does not make Tucson a safer community. The Initiative says determining a detainee’s immigration status is prohibited when investigating crimes of child molestation, domestic violence, sexual misconduct with a minor, continuous sexual abuse of a child or sexual misconduct by a behavioral health professional. That does not make Tucson a safer community.
In 2017, the City met with representatives from the ACLU and together crafted police policies related to immigration.
We have 9 pages of policies on the books that were agreed to by legal staff from that organization. We do not go into schools, hospitals and churches doing immigration searches. We do not ask victims or witnesses of crimes their immigration status. It is our policy to refrain from those sorts of contacts so that we can preserve the positive relationships we have developed with our
immigrant community.
The Sanctuary Initiative attempts to give citizens the right to bring suit in City Court over immigration contacts. City Court has no legal jurisdiction to adjudicate private civil causes of action.
This provision of the Initiative is simply illegal.
The Initiative places millions of dollars in Federal Grants at risk, and does not make Tucson a safer community. It does not advance the hard work we’ve achieved in partnership with our immigrant partners. Please vote No. Councilmember Richard Fimbres
Councilmember Paul Durham
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