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About a dozen states have created special driver's license programs for people who can't prove U.S. citizenship, and more than a dozen cities have started identification programs so that unauthorized immigrants and others can complete tasks such as opening bank accounts, enrolling their children in school and receiving government services.
Documents that cities require to prove identity and residency under the programs include birth certificates, foreign identification documents, passports or utility bills. Under most programs, cities are prohibited from copying or retaining documents. City officials must simply review them and give them back, Tucker said.
New York City's was one of just a few city programs under which documents were retained. Under a December rule change, the New York program will no longer do so. As other cities consider creating programs, Tucker suggests that they follow the same practice. And applications should only ask for the information needed to administer the program, Tucker said. "ICE can't get data that you don't keep."
At the local level, about 15 cities have created municipal IDs as a way to "make life easier" for undocumented immigrants, Tucker said.
Another way to increase the privacy of immigrants, Tucker said, is to get the general public to sign up for the IDs by offering various benefits to cardholders.
Sanctuary cities are a blatant violation of federal law. Some on the left have tried to claim that they're perfectly legal, but this is clearly false. As James Walsh, former associate general counsel of Immigration and Naturalization Services, explains, 8 USC section 1324 "deals with those persons who knowingly conceal, harbor, or shield undocumented aliens and could apply to officials in sanctuary cities and states."
"Two-thirds of all outstanding felony warrants in the city of Los Angeles involved illegal aliens -- as well as 95% of outstanding murder warrants." Additionally, Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies found that in a nine-month timeframe in 2014, sanctuary cities shielded 9,265 illegals from deportation, 62 percent of which "had significant prior criminal histories" and 2,320 of them were subsequently rearrested for new crimes, according to Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review.
According to Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, crime has risen in "sanctuary cities" across the nation. Landry told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, that sanctuary city policies "allow illegals to commit crimes, then roam free in our communities." Landry’s appearance was prompted by the changed status of New Orleans, where city police are now banned from asking an individual's immigration status. Using recent statistics from Los Angeles, another sanctuary city, Landry asserted, “Los Angeles saw all crime rise in 2015: violent crime up 19.9 percent, homicides up 10.2 percent, shooting victims up 12.6 percent, rapes up 8.6 percent, robberies up 12.3 percent, and aggravated assault up 27.5 percent … (sanctuary cities) encourage further illegal immigration and promote an underground economy that sabotages the tax base."
Soros’ Open Society Foundation has donated $100,000 to a Baltimore legal fund, created by a number of open borders groups, to pay for lawyers for illegal immigrants as they try to avoid deportation.
“Attorney General Sessions is grandstanding at the border in an attempt to look tough and scare immigrants,'' said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice Education Fund. "It’s yet another example of the Trump administration treating all immigrants as threats and as criminals.'' Josh Breisblatt, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, said the attorney general's prosecution directive effectively makes illegal entry prosecutions a national priority, beyond the border states where the majority of cases are brought. "This is a waste of resources,'' Breisblatt said. "It seems to be a further attempt to link immigration and crime.''
More than 40 suspected members of the notorious MS-13 gang faced federal charges Wednesday in Los Angeles in what law enforcement officials called one of the most significant busts of the transnational gang in its notorious decades-long history.
"This gang is responsible for murders — both of rival gangsters and innocent bystanders — as well as drug dealing and extortion in many communities in the Los Angeles area," Acting United States Attorney Sandra R. Brown said in the statement.
Wednesday's arrests are part of a multi-agency case led by the FBI that started in 2014. FBI Assistant Director in Charge Deirdre Fike told said in a news conference that more than half of the MS-13 members arrested and charged are in the country illegally and it is unclear how long they have been in the United States.
According to police officials, 12 guns, thousands of dollars in cash and drugs, and 15 children were found at the homes raided Wednesday. An early morning raid at a storefront along a strip of dilapidated buildings also found at least seven people locked in a room and they are being investigated as possible human trafficking victims.
How else are those jobs that ordinary Americans don't want to do are going to be filled?