A Senate bill criminalizes sanctuary cities and diminishes states’ rights

In Exodus 25:8, God commanded Moses: “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” But in Washington, Congress considers a bill known as the End Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026 (S. 3805) criminalizing obedience to the Biblical commandment. The measure would coerce states and localities into participation in Trump’s mass deportation.   

The sanctuary movement began in 1979 when the Los Angeles City Council implemented Special Order 40, preventing local police officers from conducting immigration-related arrests or even questioning individuals on their immigration status. Oregon has been a sanctuary state since 1987.  

According to the Department of Justice, 11 states and the District of Columbia are considered “sanctuary jurisdictions,” defined as areas that “materially impede enforcement of federal immigration statutes and regulations.” According to 2024 research, approximately 8 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally reside in sanctuary jurisdictions.  

Sanctuary cities include polities like California, New York City, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Minneapolis operates under a separation ordinance that limits but does not entirely ban cooperation.   

The End Sanctuary Cities Act is blatantly unconstitutional. Federal law may be the “supreme law of the land,” but the 10th Amendment provides that all powers not delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited to the states, are reserved for the states or the people. While federal law is supreme in immigration, states hold the independent authority to decide how their law enforcement interacts with federal immigration agents. Courts limit federal “commandeering” of local resources, supporting the rights of local jurisdictions to set their own policies, such as in “sanctuary” settings.  

The bill would facilitate the federal government’s forcing state and local officials to implement any of the pet MAGA planks — from crime and guns to anti-vaccine and the environment. This is a statute that would erode federalism, ironically a favorite doctrine of the right, and local accountability.  

It goes so far as to criminalize the conduct of local officials engaging in the “police power” given to their discretion since the founding of the republic. State governments make these decisions every day based purely on their experience with public safety on the ground. As Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they are the “laboratories” for innovation.   

Presence in this country without immigration status is only a civil offense, like a parking ticket. But this act requires that cities give Immigration and Customs Enforcement at least 48 hours’ notice before releasing anyone from prison, whether they are in the U.S. illegally or are American citizens. 

This is irrespective of whether they are accused prisoners who have made bail who are cloaked in the presumption of innocence, convicted criminals who have served out their terms or others whose cases have been dismissed. And, as argued in eloquent testimony by the Cato Institute’s David Bier, since many U.S. citizens have been targeted by ICE detainers, the bill would effectively mandate U.S. citizens be detained as well.   

The bill conjures the specter of possible criminal liability for local police for every criminal arrest. If someone turns out to be wanted by ICE, local officials will face a choice between violating state law and violating federal law. In this situation, police may choose to make fewer arrests.  

The Major City Chiefs Association has commented that these decisions “must be left in the control of local governments.” Local officials are inherently better equipped to prioritize those resources than the federal government.  

The Trump administration has a bad rap for its outsized enforcement of the immigration laws. It needs to be reined in, not spurred on; reformed, not rearmed. Its agents wear masks as though they were secret police unaccountable to anyone. 

They have killed innocent Americans on city streets without following standard police and Department of Homeland Security procedures, and then profaned their memory. When ICE shot dead Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother, Vice President JD Vance called her “a deranged leftist.” When Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, a nurse, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused him of trying to “murder federal law enforcement.”  

ICE officials have without probable cause entered homes of American citizens with administrative warrants not subject to judicial approval. They have engaged in racial and ethnic profiling. They have deported peaceful immigrants without due process, in some cases to countries where they are destined to be tortured or murdered. The most recent data show that 73 percent of those detained had no criminal conviction, and DHS itself classified that nationwide 73 percent of the detainees were no threat at all.  

ICE has engaged in aggressive public relations tactics on social media, savaging American citizens engaged in lawful protest whom they falsely claimed to have interfered with or assaulted them. The right unfairly attacked Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for proclaiming his city “will remain a welcoming city for all,” no more than a paraphrase of the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.  

The End Sanctuary Cities Act is an execration. Congress should vote it down.  

James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a published legal analyst. 

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