A list of cities, counties and states that the Trump administration said are “defying federal immigration law” has disappeared from the Department of Homeland Security’s website after being published Thursday.
Before it was removed, the list of more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” included Centre County and State College Borough.
Officials in communities across the country, from rural to urban and red to blue, have blasted the list of jurisdictions deemed uncooperative with federal immigration enforcement.
Locally in Centre County, which appears to have no policy on the books or in practice related to immigration sanctuary, officials were puzzled by the inclusion.
“I’m aware of no countywide government action that would support that conclusion,” District Attorney Bernie Cantorna, a Democrat, told StateCollege.com on Friday. “It appears to be made up.”
Commissioner Steve Dershem, a Republican, said he was “shocked” to see the county on the list.
“There’s never, to my knowledge, ever been any action taken that would even indicate anything like this,” Dershem, who has served as a commissioner for 22 years, said. “And we’ve always been cooperative with all the federal authorities, but particularly law enforcement.”
State College officials have explicitly said in the past the borough is not an immigration “sanctuary city.” (The borough did declare itself a transgender sanctuary city, which is unrelated to immigration law.)
Borough police chief John Gardner has addressed the borough’s policy on immigration enforcement several times in the past, including as recently as January.
Because most immigration enforcement is a civil administrative matter that is the responsibility of federal agencies, State College police do not voluntarily get involved, Gardner said in January. But he said that borough police will assist local, state and federal law enforcement authorities with criminal investigations and will comply with court orders.
“The only way we would get involved in any type of immigration case is on a federal judge’s order or an arrest warrant,” Gardner said. “As far as any round-ups or anything, we would not get involved in that.”
A resolution passed by State College Borough Council in 2017 spelled out that approach and reaffirmed the borough’s longstanding policy not to ask victims or witnesses of crimes about their immigration status.
After some media reports described the resolution as establishing State College as a sanctuary city, borough officials said that was not the case. Borough leaders said at the time that the resolution was a value statement, and Gardner said it changed nothing about how the police department already enforced laws or assisted with investigations.
“If information about suspected criminal violations occurring in the State College Police Department’s jurisdictions comes to the attention of the State College police today or anytime in the future, the police department will conduct the investigation themselves or assist any other local, state or federal law enforcement agency in the investigation regardless of the person’s status,” Gardner said at the time.
The resolution, borough officials said, does not restrict sharing of information with federal authorities or refuse compliance with federal law enforcement.
There’s no clear definition of what a sanctuary jurisdiction is, but the term generally applies to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It originated in the 1980s with U.S. churches that housed Central Americans who fled civil wars.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, enforces immigration laws nationwide. The agency often seeks state and local help in alerting federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding them until those authorities can take custody.
Requests by ICE to detain an inmate typically come after a suspect has been booked and fingerprinted and their fingerprints submitted to the FBI. For State College and the rest of Centre County, that happens at the Centre County Correctional Facility, which has no sanctuary policy.
In response to a question from StateCollege.com on Friday about how the borough or the county have defied immigration law, a DHS spokesperson wrote in an email that the designation is based on a number of factors “including self-identification as a sanctuary jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens.”
DHS said the list is “actively reviewed, will be regularly updated, and can be changed at any time.”
Each jurisdiction will receive “formal notification of its non-compliance with Federal statutes” and a demand that they revise their policies or potentially face suspension or termination of certain federal funds, according to DHS.
Neither the borough nor the county had received formal notification as of Friday afternoon.
The list was published as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to follow through on the president’s campaign promises to remove millions of people who are in the country illegally. It came out as Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced major leadership changes, and after a White House official said the administration wanted to increase daily immigration arrests.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order requiring Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws.
Federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would then be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the federal government identified as “sanctuary jurisdictions” and suspending or terminating the money, according to the order.
The list, which was riddled with misspellings, included sparsely populated counties that have little interaction with immigration authorities, that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump and that have actively supported his hard-line immigration policies.
In California, the city of Huntington Beach made the list even though it filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s immigration sanctuary law and passed a resolution this year declaring the community a “non-sanctuary city.”
Officials in some deep-red communities designated sanctuary jurisdictions said the list doesn’t appear to make sense, with some saying they believed it was a clerical error or resulted from confusion with their Second Amendment sanctuary policies.
Jonathan Thompson, executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs’ Association, called the list “fatally flawed” and criticized the lack of transparency and clear criteria for inclusion.
“Blaming and shaming people without fact is a distraction. It’s a mistake, it’s an error, it’s wrong,” Thompson told the Associated Press.
Communities supportive of immigrants said their policies ensure that anyone who is a victim or witness feels they can come forward and report crime.
Nithya Nathan-Pineau, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said it’s not clear what criteria were used to formulate the list or define the concept of sanctuary nor what legal action the government plans to take against the jurisdictions.
“It seems quite arbitrary because not all of these states or specific jurisdictions have a policy that limits cooperation with ICE,” Nathan-Pineau told the AP. “It’s pretty clear that this is another attempt to intimidate and bully.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
