{"id":16880,"date":"2018-04-16T12:44:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=16880"},"modified":"2018-12-28T10:36:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T15:36:00","slug":"westchester-county-goes-sanctuary-nyc-suburbs-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/04\/16\/westchester-county-goes-sanctuary-nyc-suburbs-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"Westchester County Goes Sanctuary: Are the NYC Suburbs Lost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 12, by a vote of 11-3<\/a>, the Westchester County, New York, Board of Legislators passed a sweeping sanctuary bill, \u201cImmigrant Protection Act.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The following Tuesday, March 20, the newly-installed Democrat County Executive George Latimer signed it into law<\/a>.\u00a0 This worrisome development suggests a dramatic shift underway: reasonable policies of local cooperation with immigration authorities across the tristate New York City suburbs are under attack.<\/p>\n

Of course, New York City itself has had dangerous sanctuary policies since at least the 1980s<\/a>.\u00a0 But until recently, the adjoining suburban local governments in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut could mostly be relied on to keep the lawlessness confined within the Big Apple\u2019s city limits.\u00a0 This now appears to be changing at breakneck speed.<\/p>\n

Connecticut passed its sanctuary-state bill back in 2013, the so-called \u201cTrust Act,\u201d HB 6659<\/a>.\u00a0 Radical at the time, the bill forbade law enforcement from holding illegal aliens on detainers to be picked up by immigration authorities unless they were convicted felons, suspected terrorists, or had final orders of deportation or removal.\u00a0 Now, of course, not even five years later, the open-borders crowd has moved so much further to the extreme that law is considered hopelessly moderate, so a new bill was<\/a> filed in the state legislature this year to adopt the full panoply of sanctuary policies, comparable to Oregon, Illinois, or California.\u00a0 The bill has since died<\/a>, but its mere introduction still may bode ill for the future.<\/p>\n

New Jersey\u2019s local governments have been a patchwork quilt<\/a> when it comes to sanctuary policies, but its most extreme pro-sanctuary jurisdictions\u2014places like Newark<\/a>, Jersey City<\/a>, and Hoboken<\/a>\u2014largely cluster close to New York City.\u00a0 However, New Jersey\u2019s new governor, Phil Murphy, makes no secret of the fact that he\u2019d like to change that<\/a> and turn the whole Garden State into a sanctuary state.<\/p>\n

In New York itself, there have been a handful of sanctuary cities, towns and villages in the suburbs for years, but mostly the counties have pushed back and sided with the rule of law: this is particularly important since it\u2019s the counties that run the jails.\u00a0 After the 2016 election, however, the trickle became a flood: in 2017 alone, more than ten suburban New York municipalities adopted sanctuary policies, whether they adopted the sanctuary label or not.\u00a0 And Westchester County would have joined them with a previous version of the \u201cImmigrant Protection Act,\u201d but for a veto<\/a> by Republican former County Executive Rob Astorino.\u00a0 Troublingly, Latimer ran against<\/a> Astorino on that specifically<\/a>, and won<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s two suburban Long Island counties, Nassau<\/a> and Suffolk<\/a>, have held out and still honor detainers.\u00a0 But they\u2019re both already being sued<\/a> for it<\/a>.\u00a0 One has to wonder if they\u2019ll stand firm or they, too, will cave before this apparent sanctuary flood.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s state Senate, the last stopgap against one-party rule in Albany,\u00a0 recently passed<\/a> a commendable anti-sanctuary bill, SB 3698<\/a>, that like SB 4 in Texas<\/a>, which would reverse the tide of sanctuary jurisdictions \u00a0popping up at the local level.\u00a0 But it was unsurprisingly declared \u201cdead on arrival\u201d<\/a> in the Democrat-controlled Assembly.<\/p>\n

It may not be too late, but those committed to public safety and the rule of law in the New York City suburbs should probably be prepared to face an uphill struggle for some time to come.