My New Dispatch Article, "In Defense of Sanctuary Cities"
It explains how sanctuary policies are justified on both constitutional and moral grounds.
Today, The Dispatch published my new article, "In Defense of Sanctuary Cities" (gift link). Here is an excerpt:
Sanctuary cities and states have been a major focus of political conflict in the second Trump administration, perhaps even more than in the first. These jurisdictions refuse or severely limit assistance to federal efforts to detain and deport suspected illegal immigrants. Most only provide such assistance in cases involving undocumented migrants who have committed serious crimes. Regardless of the politics, the 10th Amendment protects sanctuary jurisdictions from compulsion by the federal government. And their policies are also well justified on moral and pragmatic grounds. This is particularly true at a time when many federal immigration enforcement efforts are cruel and illegal….
The 10th Amendment states that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In a series of decisions primarily supported by conservative justices, the Supreme Court has held that the 10th Amendment bars federal "commandeering" of state and local government personnel and resources, including forcing them to help enforce federal law against private parties….
The constitutional basis for protecting sanctuary jurisdictions against executive-created spending conditions is also strong. As numerous court decisions have held, the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse. Thus, the executive cannot attach its own conditions to federal grants to the states, as Trump has repeatedly tried to do. In addition, even Congress' power to spend for the "general welfare" is not unlimited, and it cannot use this authority to completely gut state autonomy…
Conservatives tempted to jettison these constitutional rules in order to stick it to liberal immigration sanctuaries would do well to remember that the same principles also protect red-state "gun sanctuaries," such as Missouri and Montana, which deny state assistance for enforcement of federal gun control laws. The two types of sanctuary jurisdictions stand or fall together….
In addition to being constitutionally protected, sanctuary policies are also right and just. Sanctuary jurisdictions have rightly concluded that police resources are better used to combat violent and property crime instead of aiding in deportation efforts….. Undocumented migrants actually have much lower crime rates than native-born citizens, and most of those detained, especially in recent months, actually have no criminal records at all. Local and state participation in deportation efforts also makes it more difficult to combat crime by poisoning relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities.
The cruel and illegal nature of much of the federal deportation effort provides additional justification for denying it state and local assistance. In more than 4,400 immigration cases over the last year, courts have ruled that the second Trump administration illegally detained people. The true number of illegal detentions is likely much greater….
Meanwhile, federal immigration agents routinely engage in unconstitutional discrimination in the form of racial and ethnic profiling. The incredible extent of racial and ethnic profiling by federal immigration authorities is demonstrated by the fact that immigration arrests in Los Angeles County declined by 66 percent within just 16 days after a court order barred the use of such tactics… Conservatives and others who advocate color-blindness in government policy should support state governments' refusal to facilitate such massive racial discrimination…..
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities routinely feature shockingly callous treatment of those imprisoned there, including overcrowding, inadequate food, denial of needed medical treatment, and child abuse, including hundreds of violations of a legal settlement barring detention of children for more than a 20-day period. State and local governments should not help imprison still more people in these horrific conditions.
I also covered Tenth Amendment issues related to sanctuary cities in two other recent articles linked below:
"Does the ICE Crackdown in Minnesota Violate the Tenth Amendment?," Brennan Center State Court Report, Feb. 2, 2026.
"Minnesota's Compelling 10th Amendment Case Against Trump's ICE Surge," Lawfare, Jan. 30, 2026.