San Francisco sues Trump over sanctuary city plan

San Francisco is the first of the so-called sanctuary cities to sue US President Donald Trump over his executive order to withhold federal funding to those cities.

The city of San Francisco on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Trump in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, requesting an injunction on the president's order to strip funding to the cities preventing local law enforcement from assuming immigration-related duties.

San Francisco's city attorney, Dennis Herrera, said the president's order is not only "unconstitutional" but also "un-American".

The constitution gives local and state enforcement powers to make decisions in the best interest of residents, but the order seeks to interfere with those powers, Herrera said at a press conference on Tuesday.

"San Francisco is safer when all people, including undocumented immigrants, feel safe reporting crimes. Using city and county resources for federal immigration enforcement breeds distrust of local government and officials who have no power to change federal laws, and can also wrench apart family and community structures that support residents and thus conserve resources," reads the complaint.

Trump said the order is to "protect the lives of the American people". His supporters say it is in the best interest of public safety.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday embraced Trump's attempted crackdown on sanctuary cities, saying that "to protect Texas from deadly danger, we must insist that laws be followed", according to WISN 12 News.

However, a Stanford professor said there's no evidence that undocumented migrants commit a disproportionate share of crime in the United States.

"The best proof, maybe, is the relatively low rates of violent crime and property offenses in border cities like San Diego, Laredo, El Paso, and Brownsville. Those are places with very high concentrations of noncitizens, including undocumented migrants, and they are strikingly safe," said David Alan Sklansk, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, in an article posted at the university's website on Monday. "San Diego, El Paso, and Brownsville have lower homicide rates than Des Moines. The rate in Laredo is only slightly higher."

Sklansk said "the police need the cooperation of immigrant communities in order to fight crime. Effective policing depends on the trust and cooperation of the people served by the police department-rich and poor, native-born and immigrant" San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, a time when thousands of Central American refugees fled countries in the midst of violent civil wars to seek legal protection in the United States in the 1980s.

More than 400 jurisdictions across the country have some sort of sanctuary policy, offering political support or protections to people who are in the country illegally.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com