MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Officials in communities from rural to urban and red to blue blasted the Trump administration’s list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” with many saying they’ve been outspoken supporters of the president and his stringent immigration policies.
Officials who back President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown questioned how their jurisdictions wound up on a list of more than 500 that the Department of Homeland Security says are obstructing enforcement. Several communities were misspelled, including Cincinnati, which was spelled Cincinnatti. Also, some counties were mislabeled as cities and some cities as counties.
Jim Davel, administrator for Shawano County, Wisconsin, said the inclusion of his community must be a clerical error. Davel voted for Trump as did 67% of Shawano County.
“We have no idea how we got on this list whatsoever right at this point,” Davel said. “I think it was just a big mix up, probably some paperwork or something.”
Davel thinks the administration may have confused the county’s vote in 2021 to become a “Second Amendment Sanctuary County” that prohibits gun control measures with it being a safe haven for immigrants. He said the county has approved no immigration sanctuary policies.
Meanwhile, those with policies protecting immigrants also pushed back, saying they are doing right by their communities.
“This is simply the latest attempt by the Trump administration to strong-arm cities like Seattle into changing our local policies through bluster and threats to critical federal funding for public safety and homelessness,” Bruce Harrell, the city’s mayor, told The Associated Press in an email. “It’s not going to work — the law is on our side — and we will not hesitate to protect our people and stand up for our values.”
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 drive daily immigration arrests significantly higher.
The administration has said each jurisdiction on the list will receive formal notification that the government has deemed them noncompliant and if they’re believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes.
A message was left Friday seeking comment from DHS.
Some communities don’t know why they were included
The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to Homeland Security.
But communities said the list doesn’t appear to make sense. In California’s Orange County, the city of Huntington Beach is on the list even though it has sued the state over its policies that protect immigrants and its City Council supports Trump. But the nearby city of Santa Ana, which has policies to protect members of its sizable immigrant community, is not.
In North Dakota, seven mostly small, rural counties wound up on the list, including Slope County, which has about 700 people and overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024. County officials reached out to Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong’s office to see what steps to take next, and plan to discuss the matter next week with the county state’s attorney, County Commission Chairman Scott Ouradnik said.
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 said.
Other communities defend their policies that protect immigrants
Communities supportive of immigrants said their policies aren’t just about immigrants but all residents by ensuring anyone who is a victim or witness feels they can come forward and report crime. States including California, Illinois and Washington, which have such policies, are on the list.
In Hartford, Connecticut, Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said the capital city’s laws and policies have enhanced the vibrancy and safety of the community. The city bars people’s immigration status from being used to deny city services and police can’t arrest people solely because of immigration status.
“While my administration remains laser-focused on real solutions that protect our community, it is clear that current federal policies do not share this commitment to safety and threaten to undermine the gains we have made,” Arulampalam said in a statement.
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 said. “It’s pretty clear that this is another attempt to intimidate and bully.”
The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports limits on immigration, has kept its own list of sanctuary jurisdictions for at least a decade that it updates frequently. It differs from the administration’s. Jessica Vaughan, the group’s director of policy studies, questioned what documentation the administration used for its list.
What is a sanctuary jurisdiction?
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.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated.
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 executive order.
ICE, 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 are able to take custody.
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Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California, and Bellisle from Seattle. Associated Press writers Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, David Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, Gisela Salomon in Miami, John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois, Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed.
