Actually, Sanctuary Cities Are Safer

Here’s why all the vitriol we’re hearing right now is misguided.

A memorial to Kate Steinle, who was shot last week on San Francisco's Pier 14Josh Harkinson

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Indignation continues to mount on the right over the killing of a 32-year-old white woman in San Francisco last week, allegedly at the hands of an undocumented Mexican immigrant. Following the lead of Donald Trump, who last week used the incident to demand tougher immigration enforcement, GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Rand Paul on Wednesday called for an end to “sanctuary city” policies such as the one in San Francisco, which had allowed the alleged shooter, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, to roam free despite an outstanding federal deportation order.

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly accused San Francisco’s mayor and county supervisors of being “directly responsible for the murder.”

The tragic particulars of the case seem tailor-made for Fox News. Police say San Francisco resident Kate Steinle was out for an evening stroll with her father on a touristy section of the city’s waterfront when Lopez-Sanchez shot her, seemingly at random. Back in April, he was being held in a San Francisco jail on a 20-year-old drug charge, which a judge ultimately threw out. And although he was wanted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, city officials were prohibited by city law from notifying ICE before releasing him. On Monday, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly accused San Francisco’s mayor and county supervisors of being “directly responsible for the murder” and called on the federal government to compel cities to enforce immigration law.

But there’s a reason sanctuary city laws are so popular, with more than 200 state and local jurisdictions refusing to honor ICE detention requests. Evidence suggests that these laws don’t just make cities safer for illegal immigrants; they make them safer for everyone.

Take San Francisco. If the GOP candidates are to be believed, then we should have seen a rise in San Francisco’s murder rate in the 26 years since it enacted its sanctuary law, and a further spike since 2013, when the city amended the law to cover even repeat felons such as Lopez-Sanchez. Instead, the city’s murder rate has fallen to its lowest level in decades:

We’re seeing a similar phenomenon throughout California. According to a Department of Justice report released last week, the number of homicides in the state fell to to 1,691 last year, the lowest since 1971. Meanwhile, the state legislature and all but a few counties have enacted sanctuary laws, though they vary in the sorts of protections offered.

It’s worth noting that crime has fallen nationwide in recent years, but San Francisco’s murder rate is also low compared to that of comparable cities that don’t have sanctuary policies:

Crime rates alone aren’t enough to prove that sanctuary laws make us safer, but other evidence suggests the effect on public safety is real. A 2013 study by the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois-Chicago surveyed Latinos in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. It found that the increased involvement of local police in immigration enforcement in those cities had eroded trust in the legal system among both legal and illegal immigrants. Of those surveyed, 38 percent said they felt like they were under more suspicion and 45 percent said they were less likely to report a crime as a result—70 percent of the undocumented immigrants said so. The erosion of trust was felt most acutely in Phoenix, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has put strict immigration enforcement at the center of his agenda. 

According to a new analysis of census data, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.

Law enforcement interests take such concerns seriously. A 2009 report published by the Police Foundation found that “local police involvement in immigration enforcement could have a chilling effect on immigrant cooperation” with police. “Without this cooperation, law enforcement will have difficulty apprehending and successfully prosecuting criminals, thereby reducing overall public safety for the larger community.”

Sanctuary laws may also help cities prevent crime by attracting more immigrants. According to an analysis of census data published last week by the Immigration Policy Center, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens—1.6 percent of immigrant men between the ages of 18 and 39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of men who were born here. Even among young, less-educated Mexican, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran men who make up the bulk of the foreign-born prison population, the incarceration rate is much lower than that of native-born men who lack a high-school diploma.

Does all of this mean sanctuary laws will always work as intended? The killing of Kate Steinle suggests otherwise. But on balance, the data shows that they are more likely than not to improve public safety.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate