WASHINGTON – Les Républicains du Congress target four cities – often called “sanctuary cities” – about their policies limiting cooperation with the application of immigration with an audience this week coming while President Donald Trump is growing with his mass deportation campaign.
The Michelle Wu mayors of Boston, Brandon Johnson by Chicago, Mike Johnston from Denver and Eric Adams in New York is expected to appear on Wednesday before the house committee on surveillance and government reform.
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with immigration and customs application. Ice applies American immigration laws nationally, but seeks national and local aid, in particular for large -scale deportations, asking that the police and the sheriffs alert them to the people they want to expel and hold them until federal officers take care.
Find out more: What are the sanctuary cities and why is Trump targets them?
But some cities and states say that cooperating with ice means victims of crimes and witnesses who are not legally in the United States will not appear. And, to various degrees, the officials argue that they want their localities to be welcoming for immigrants.
The courts have repeatedly maintained the legality of most of the laws on the sanctuary. But officials of the Trump administration targeted the sanctuary policies as soon as the door is released during its second term, considering them a key obstacle to expel people in large numbers. The administration continued Chicago and Illinois as well as New York State for various immigration laws.
Here is an overview of immigration policies and migration trends in cities whose mayors will appear on Wednesday:
Boston
The law on the trust of the city generally restricts how much the police can cooperate with ice, although they allow a certain cooperation with a division entitled Homeland Security Investigations with regard to questions such as the fight against trafficking in human beings or drug and weapon trafficking.
The city must also follow a 2017 decision by the highest courtyard of the State which prohibits the Massachusetts authorities from holding a person who is otherwise authorized to release from custody based solely on a federal request.
These requests, called detainees, generally ask the federal, state, local and tribal organizations of the application of laws to give at least 48 hours of notice before alleged immigrants were released from prison – or to hold them up to 48 hours after they are normally released so that the ice can recover them. Otherwise, the ice must go out in the community to stop them.
Trump’s tsar border, Tom Homan, hammered Boston’s police commissioner and promised to go to Boston and “bring hell” with him.
It did not sit well in Boston.
Wu, a democrat for re -election of this year, said that it was “without any idea” and “insulting” for Homan to attack the police commissioner and that she wanted Boston to be a welcoming place for immigrants.
Suffolk County District Prosecutor Kevin Hayden said that the defendant’s presentation makes the cooperation of immigrants more difficult during the crimes investigation.
Chicago
Chicago has some of the strongest immigrants in the country, except cooperation between federal agents and city employees, including police.
The third city in the country has become a sanctuary place in the 1980s and has amplified its policies several times since. This includes a 2012 order which prohibits federal agents from accessing the resources of the City to help immigration operations.
City officials strengthened the protections after Trump took office in 2017 and again in 2020, when he forced the police to document the requests for help from federal agents. Illinois also has protections allowing anyone, regardless of immigration status, to obtain a driving license.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, who took office in 2023, inherited a migrant crisis his first year. In short of shelter, Chicago managers used police hall, airports, parked buses and hotels to house asylum seekers.
At its peak, around 15,000 migrants lived in dozens of temporary shelters, although the city has closed them while the number of people arriving decreased.
There have been a handful of municipal council attempts to weaken the protections of the Chicago sanctuary, but they failed in the democratic city.
Johnson defended politicians.
“We welcome all the people and all the families who want to work, live and prosper here in our beloved city,” said Johnson at the end of January.
Denver
Denver has become a hub for immigrants who cross the American-Mexican border, the city seeing arrivals of 43,000 in the past two years.
Mayor Mike Johnston struggled to tinker with the resources to house and feed them, by scouring parts of the city’s budget and pleading the federal government alongside other mayors for funding, which only partially came.
The spotlights fell back when a video of armed men in a building in the suburbs of Denver d’Aurora became viral, which prompted Trump at the time to say that the city of 400,000 people was exceeded by a Venezuelan gang.
The idea was quickly repudiated by local officials, but the spotlights remained on Colorado.
In early February, strongly armed federal agents in masks and armored vehicles appeared in the metropolitan region. The results of the operation are not clear, and Homan said that information media leaks have hampered raids.
The mayor repeated that he wants Denver to be a welcoming place while trace the line of those who commit violent crimes.
Last month, Denver’s public schools became the first district to continue the Trump administration about its policy allowing ICE immigration agents in schools.
new York
In New York, around 231,000 immigrants have arrived since 2022 – at a cost that the city estimates that it is more than $ 7 billion for shelters, food, security and legal support.
Last month, the city continued the Trump administration more than $ 80.6 million in reimbursements for the help of immigrants approved by the congress after the officials paid the money and then recovered it.
As in other cities, New York immigrant arrivals have decreased dramatically in the past year.
Mayor Eric Adams continues to support policies that guarantee that all residents have access to social services, regardless of immigration status.
But Adams wants to withdraw policies prohibiting city employees from working with the application of immigration, saying that he wanted to “withdraw dangerous people from our streets”. He also called on the municipal council to make changes, allowing New York to honor requests for relaxing ice to keep people in prison beyond their release dates. And he invited glacial agents to work outside the Island City Rikers prison.
The criticisms of Adams, including those who present themselves to the mayor, say that his desire to work with the White House is an effort to get rid of the federal corruption accusations.
Adams declared before the hearing that he hoped for a “civil conversation” with the representatives “around a very complex subject that many cities have inherited”.
The editors of the Associated Press Cedar Attanasio and Jennifer Peltz in New York, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Sophia Tareen in Chicago and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.
