President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration plans are not sitting well with many people in America. We recently reported that students across various campuses launched the trending topic/movement #SanctuaryCampus, demanding colleges to act as safe house to protect students and employees against immigration act. The movement has impacted many people including, Santa Fe’s mayor Javier Gonzales who is joining in on the movement.
According to FOX News Latino, the Hispanic mayor of the nation's oldest state capital has become a public face of "sanctuary cities" following Trump's presidential victory.
As a Hispanic man in power, Gonzales has very strong views against Trump’s immigration plans. The site reports that the mayor sat down with FOX and CNN anchors last week to denounce Trump's renewed vows to deport millions of immigrants and his campaign promises to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities that defy immigration authorities.
"Where we're unique is that Mexican and the Central American and the South American immigration have been part of Santa Fe's story for those 400 years," said Gonzales, whose father also was a Santa Fe mayor.
Santa Fe's switch to sanctuary-city status dates back to the 1999 adoption of an ordinance that says, "no municipal resources will be used to identify or apprehend any non-citizen resident solely on the basis of immigration status, unless otherwise lawfully required to do so."
This clause means that local police under any circumstances do not enforce noncriminal warrants from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or so-called detainer requests to delay the release of immigrants arrested on minor offenses, city spokesman Matt Ross said.
The municipal police department has a policy, a written clause that states arrests will not be made based solely on immigration status however, officers are allowed to share information on other arrests with federal immigration agencies. No other New Mexico city has similar sanctuary provisions, and most county sheriff's offices cooperate closely with immigration enforcement.
The news may come to a shock to some as Santa Fe receives around six million, roughly two percent of its budget from the U.S. government. With Gonzales’ stance on immigration, that money may be in jeopardy once Trump gets into office.
"We'll see if the president-elect chooses to penalize sanctuary cities before he proposes one piece of legislation that fixes a broken immigration system," Gonzales said. "That tells you a lot about his priorities."
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