Deputies in New Orleans are barred from inquiring about detainees’ immigration details and passing such data to federal officials. Though the Louisiana legislature has passed laws banning sanctuary policies, “the existing parties have not moved for dissolution.”
In February, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill submitted a request to the U.S. District Court in New Orleans, aimed at policies of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office that restrict the sheriff’s office from executing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrants unless the individuals involved are linked to violent offenses.
These policies emerged from a federal court agreement tied to a 2011 lawsuit, where two individuals claimed they were unlawfully detained in the city’s jail for months at the direction of ICE.
In 2016, current Governor and then Attorney General Jeff Landry testified before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Boarder Security, detailing the effects of the decree and “sanctuary policies” more broadly in the Crescent city.
On Wednesday, almost a decade later, testimony from the mayors of four sanctuary cities was heard before the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell did not testify.
Though nine years separates the two hearings, the disorienting and confusing blame-games, legal tangles and incongruity between federal, state and local law is as pervasive as ever.
In 2016, Landry testified on collusion between New Orleans and the justice department in enforcing the still active consent decree, which “absolutely violated Federal law.”
On Wednesday, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston was interrogated on the city’s refusal to cooperate with the federal government.
“You have local law enforcement officers mister who are unable to coordinate with ICE to even get the initial warrant,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Co., said. “They aren’t allowed to tell them that they are illegal aliens. Unfortunately, you won’t join me in asking for this law, demanding that this law be repealed.”
Johnston said that the city of Denver has “honored detainer requests more than 1,226 times over the last year.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams spoke on federal law, state law and city law prohibiting the mayor from cooperating with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or stopping the convoys of undocumented immigrants shipped to the Windy City.
“Over the last three years, federal law did not allow me to stop busses from entering New York City. State law required me to provide all in our city with housing and mills and to educate children. City law makes it unlawful to collaborate with ice for civil enforcement,” Adams said.
Mayors like Johnston and Adams tell two different stories under a similar emphasis — a desperate bid to manage crises dumped at their doorsteps by a system too gridlocked to adapt. The buses kept rolling, the warrants piled up, and the laws — federal, state, and local — twist into knots court rulings and committee hearings struggle to untie.
