In an editorial in the Topeka Capital-Journal, Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, explains why the ACLU believes local law enforcement should remain focused on local issues, not on immigration.


How ironic that an anti-immigration article by Tim Morse, sheriff of Jackson County, was published in The Topeka Capital-Journal on St. Patrick’s Day, when our nation honors immigrants who came here from Ireland. The Irish arrived in waves during the 19th and early 20th centuries, they were widely resented and frequently met with open hostility.

Today, those same emotions are projected onto immigrants from other nations. Non-native residents often are portrayed as “criminal aliens walking the streets of America,” to quote Morse, who rails against the concept of sanctuary cities. To date, there are no sanctuary cities in Kansas, although there are hundreds throughout the U.S.

A sanctuary city is one in which a local government has formally adopted a policy of not volunteering to take on the responsibility for the routine enforcement of federal immigration law — something Morse seems all too ready to do when he advocates for local law enforcement officers to serve as “boots on the ground” with federal immigration enforcement officials.

Declining to take responsibility for routine enforcement of federal immigration law is not unlawful. On the contrary, enforcement of immigration is a federal responsibility. When the federal government attempts to take on enforcement of state law — or vice versa — it is both antithetical to the principle of federalism and problematic on a pragmatic level.

Further, the ACLU actively believes that sanctuary cities are a good idea. Why? Sanctuary cities protect immigrant rights; undocumented immigrants are more likely to work with law enforcement if they are not afraid of deportation; sanctuary city status increases safety for everyone in a community because people who otherwise would be afraid to call police for help or to offer assistance are now willing to do so. And if these reasons are not persuasive, consider the additional costs that accrue to cities that beef up local law enforcement not because it is needed, but because they have opted to do the work of federal immigration enforcement. Routine, front-line enforcement of immigration law is an expensive proposition, requiring significant resources in money, energy, staff and time.

Morse speaks up in favor of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers or “immigration holds,” which have been found unconstitutional in many federal courts. An ICE detainer is a written request that a local jail or other law enforcement agency detain an individual for an additional 48 hours after his or her release date in order to provide ICE agents extra time to decide whether to take the individual into federal custody for deportation. In 2014, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged “the increasing number of federal court decisions that hold that detainer-based detention by state and local law enforcement agencies violates the Fourth Amendment.”

When local law enforcement starts doing the work of federal officers, as Morse is advocating, they wind up spending less time on local responsibilities, and people suffer. We don’t expect ICE agents to investigate local murders, robberies or traffic accidents; why would we expect local law enforcement officers to investigate immigration?

Consider the case of Maricopa County, Arizona, where until last November, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio focused on the pursuit of undocumented immigrants. According to news accounts, his obsession with immigration cost Phoenix millions of dollars, with overtime spending on immigration enforcement leading to a budget crisis and legal fees for lawsuits about his policies costing taxpayers a reported $142 million. Worst of all, while local law enforcement was focusing on detaining immigrants, patrol cars were late to 911 calls and serious crimes went unsolved.

Rather than seeing Kansas as a place where borders need to be erected and defended, how much better it would be if our state were to invest its energies in respecting the clear distinctions between local and federal responsibilities, displaying a commitment to the kind of inclusiveness that made our country great and ensuring equal protection under the law for all who live in our state.

Micah Kubic is executive director of the ACLU of Kansas.

Read originial op-ed at the Topeka Capital-Journal from March 29, 2017.