How might Minnesota’s ‘sanctuary city’ policies stand up in court?
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The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Minneapolis, St. Paul, Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota over so-called "sanctuary city policies” that limit collaboration with immigration enforcement.
MPR News host Clay Masters spoke with Madeline Lohman from The Advocates for Human Rights, which provides legal help, advocacy and education for immigrants.
Press play above to listen to their conversation, or read a transcript below, edited for length and clarity.
This lawsuit involves ‘sanctuary city policies,’ also known as separation ordinances. Can you explain quickly what that means?
Yeah, the “sanctuary” term is incredibly misleading, because they’re not really a sanctuary from anything. Federal law enforcement can enforce the laws up to their constitutional limitations, wherever they want to in Minnesota. They can carry out criminal warrants, detain immigrants that have violated immigration law. Those things are possible in Minnesota, so there’s no sense of preventing federal law from being enforced.
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A separation ordinance is about saying, “What do we want to prioritize on the local level? What do we want our local law enforcement agencies to do?” and a separation ordinance says, “We want them to focus on local public safety priorities and building trust with local communities, not on federal immigration enforcement, which is the job of federal law enforcement.”
Are separation ordinances a violation of federal law?
Not at all. They are absolutely permitted for local jurisdictions to decide their own local law enforcement priorities. If federal law enforcement issues a data request based on an active criminal case, our local jurisdictions can respond to that. If there’s a joint investigation and they want to execute a warrant, local law enforcement might assist with executing a proper judicial warrant.
So, we’re engaging with federal law enforcement to the extent that the law requires us. It’s very clear exactly what the relationship between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement should be, and the separation ordinance does not prohibit any of that legally required cooperation.
Your organization works with migrants. What should migrants who might be listening right now keep in mind?
The thing to keep in mind about this lawsuit is that, at the moment, it is not changing anything in Minnesota, and so whatever approaches people were taking to local law enforcement right now based on these separation policies, they should continue to trust that Minneapolis police and St. Paul police are still following those separation ordinances.
What is likely to happen then next, with the legal process here. What do you expect?
This is going to go before a judge who’s going to listen to the arguments. Previous lawsuits around separation ordinances have affirmed that local jurisdictions are allowed to have these policies. So my expectation would be that something similar might happen here, but we would have to wait and see the legal process play out.
There will no doubt be appeals, regardless of how the case is going to turn out, and it will take a little while for the end result to be clear.
