Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act gives sanctuary cities a model for resistance to Trump
HISTORY NEWS NETWORK
22 FEB 2017 AT 09:06 ET
Lawsuits over the executive order that barred entry from seven predominantly Muslim nations dominated the news in recent weeks. To less fanfare, local governments in San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and Massachusetts filed lawsuits hoping to see President Trump in court concerning another executive order—one that seeks to coerce local participation in immigration enforcement by starving the sanctuary cities of federal funding.
Anti-sanctuary agitators regularly claim that sanctuary jurisdictions defy federal law, and some (most recently Karl Rove) go so far as to suggest that cities and counties that seek to disentangle themselves from federal immigration enforcement are morally and legally equivalent to the slaveholding South.
But while sanctuary policies can express disagreement with federal policy, this does not make antebellum nullification their historical progenitor. Closer analysis yields a more meaningful historical analogue, between sanctuary cities and those northern communities that resisted fugitive slave recapture.
By enacting anti-detainer policies, sanctuary cities seek to disrupt a pipeline by which humans are fed from local criminal systems into the immigration enforcement system. The transfer of prisoners is accomplished with pieces of paper (“detainers”), requesting that local authorities prolong prisoners’ detention and eventually turn their bodies over to federal immigration authorities.
more
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/resistance-to-the-fugitive-slave-act-gives-sanctuary-cities-a-model-for-resistance-to-trump/