Trumps Sanctuary City Crackdown Faces Resistance in Unexpected Places

[question everything]

ALLENTOWN, Pa.—One of the chief strategies in President Donald Trump’s battle against illegal immigration is being undercut by an unlikely figure: a New Jersey native named Ernesto Galarza.

In 2008, Mr. Galarza was doing construction work in this eastern Pennsylvania city when his boss allegedly sold drugs to an undercover police detective. Mr. Galarza was arrested along with the boss, and booked into the Lehigh County jail. Mr. Galarza posted bond, but wasn’t released because a federal immigration agent had asked the jail to hold him. He sat behind bars three extra days before anyone realized he was a U.S. citizen.

The American Civil Liberties Union later won $95,000 from Lehigh County for violating Mr. Galarza’s constitutional rights, laying the groundwork for today’s high-profile battle between President Trump and what are often called “sanctuary cities.”

The Galarza case, and two similar ones that followed, signaled that counties will be held accountable in court if they wrongly imprison someone, and that acting at the request of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency isn’t a viable legal defense.

Many cities and counties nationwide, including Lehigh, no longer hold people just because ICE asks. So while the president and his aides are at war with liberal enclaves like San Francisco and Chicago that declare themselves sanctuaries, they also are on a collision course with places like Lehigh County, a middle-class region where Republicans control the county commission.

(snip)

Few people had ever heard of the issue back in 2008, when Mr. Galarza was arrested.

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After posting bail, Mr. Galarza was on his way out of the county jail when an officer stopped him. Mr. Galarza had told the officer he was born in New Jersey but she didn’t believe it and reported him to ICE, according to court documents.

An ICE officer then filed a “detainer” instructing the jail to hold Mr. Galarza. He spent the weekend in the jail. On Monday, he was peppered with questions by ICE officers and finally released that night. By then, he had lost a part-time job and wages from two other jobs, court documents show. Five months later, he was acquitted of the drug charge.

More than a year later, the legal director of the ACLU in Pennsylvania, Witold Walczak, was passing through Allentown to give a speech and had lunch with a local attorney he knew... For the ACLU, Mr. Galarza was an ideal plaintiff. The group wanted to challenge the Obama administration’s stepped-up use of detainers. “We had come up with a legal framework, and we needed a plaintiff,” said Mr. Walczak.

In November 2010, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on Mr. Galarza’s behalf against the Allentown detective, the ICE agents, the city of Allentown and Lehigh County. It alleged that Mr. Galarza’s constitutional rights were violated and noted that no probable cause to hold him had been established. All four defendants moved to dismiss the case. The officers and the city lost and each settled out of court.

The judge let the county off the hook, but Mr. Galarza appealed to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Lehigh County, which operates the jail, defended itself by saying it was simply following orders from a federal agency. That argument was undermined by statements from ICE that detainers were “requests” and compliance couldn’t be compelled.

In 2014, the appellate court ruled, 2-1, that the federal government had no right to require agencies to comply with detainers, under Supreme Court precedent preventing Washington from “commandeering” state and local agencies for federal purposes. Lehigh County settled the case for $95,000 and by agreeing to a new policy whereby it no longer holds people because of an ICE request. The vote by the county commission was 9-0.

The ACLU then wrote to officials in every Pennsylvania county, informing them of the Galarza opinion and urging them to follow Lehigh County’s lead.

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Other counties followed suit. A report from the Temple University law school found that by 2015, about half of Pennsylvania counties had adopted policies of not routinely cooperating with ICE detainers. Of the 32 such counties, 25 went for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. Many of the local officials involved say they were motivated by the Galarza case, or by two similar court rulings that followed, from cases originating in Rhode Island and in Oregon.

So many counties were resisting ICE that in 2014, the Obama administration stopped pressuring local jails to comply in every case, instead negotiating terms of cooperation.

(snip)

Undeterred, the local tea party group is working to keep the issue alive. In June, about a dozen members of the group’s immigration committee met to plot strategy to persuade the commissioners to overturn the policy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-sanctuary-city-crackdown-faces-resistance-in-unexpected-places-1501761600

[riversedge]

1. Great story. thanks for post

[DK504]

2. Less than $100,000 for all that?

What about the man, a citizen, that was held for 3 1/2 years for being a supposed "illegal". Exactly when will these assholes be held accountable?

[question everything]

3. It is not just the money, it is this, from above:

Other counties followed suit. A report from the Temple University law school found that by 2015, about half of Pennsylvania counties had adopted policies of not routinely cooperating with ICE detainers. Of the 32 such counties, 25 went for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. Many of the local officials involved say they were motivated by the Galarza case, or by two similar court rulings that followed, from cases originating in Rhode Island and in Oregon.

[Demit]

4. He also got $50K in settlements with ICE & city police for their roles in the incident.