In an issue fraught with vitriol and passion that often clouds reasonable discussion, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office has staked out a clear and logical position.
Clark County is not a “sanctuary county” by the pure definition of the term — a term that has become increasingly familiar. Under the most basic explanation, sanctuary counties and sanctuary cities are jurisdictions that decline to prosecute people for violating immigration laws and that decline to assist federal authorities in such prosecutions, usually by refusing to turn over undocumented immigrants for deportation.
The issue has come to the forefront with President Donald Trump signing an executive order to prevent federal funds from going to sanctuary cities. San Francisco, which receives more than $1 billion annually from the federal government, on Tuesday filed a lawsuit claiming the executive order is unconstitutional.
So, with sanctuary counties and sanctuary cities becoming a hot potato in the discussion over illegal immigration — and with Clark County often listed by websites as one such county — Sheriff Chuck Atkins felt compelled recently to explain the county’s position. “Every person lodged at the Clark County Jail is lodged pursuant to either a court order, arrest warrant, or upon a sworn probable cause affidavit,” Atkins wrote in a Facebook post. “(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detainers, by themselves, are legally insufficient to deprive a person of their freedom and hold them in custody.”
In other words, sheriff’s deputies require sufficient proof that somebody is in violation of immigration laws. In other words, they are upholding the law.
As Atkins and Undersheriff Mike Cooke explained to The Columbian, there is strong case law to support this position. In 2012, for example, a U.S. District Court judge found that Clackamas County in Oregon had violated a woman’s civil rights by holding her at the behest of federal officials even after her other case had been resolved. Cooke said: “We don’t deal within the fog of the political process, we deal with the reality of what statutes tell us that we need to do and what the courts tell us we need to do.”
That is a reasonable position for the county to embrace. As much as some would like to take a hard line against illegal immigration — and as important as it is to uphold the laws of the nation — the bottom line is that the U.S. Constitution guarantees certain rights that must be inviolate. When society begins accepting wanton violation of those rights, then we abandon the very foundation of this nation.
There also would be a negative impact to having law enforcement — or, say, emergency room workers — act as the immigration police. It would be detrimental to have people avoid reporting crimes or seeking medical attention out of fear of deportation. Cooke said: “We just concentrate on what we need to do as a law-enforcement agency, and we try to do it with compassion and the understanding that we’re dealing with human beings.”
Meanwhile, Trump is to be lauded for bringing attention to the situation and pressuring individual jurisdictions into enforcing the law, but he is deserving of criticism for the clunky manner in which he has approached it. At some point, the new president is going to need to deal with Congress and build consensus for his ideas rather than governing by fiat and executive order.
When that finally happens, perhaps the country can deal with illegal immigration in a thoughtful and constructive manner.
