Sanctuary & Punishment

It's been way too long since I've posted. Been through the borderlands, through LA (where I got to participate in a wonderful community planning process), through Arpaio country, and now a bit of time in New Mexico before making quick leaps back across the country.

With so much of my attention directed south, I must say that I feel dismay at the recent changes in San Francisco's sanctuary laws. The changes are, ultimately, a reminder of the limits of the existing policies and of their ambattled nature whereever they are implemented.

San Francisco has had one of the strongest sanctuary city policies in the nation, but earlier this week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to water down its sanctuary city policy (thanks to Pjax for alerting me). Sanctuary city ordinances and policies vary by city, but across the country they are the result of efforts in the 1980s to provide sanctuary to refugees from wars in Central America, which the United States had a role in supporting. Essentially, sanctuary city policies say that city governments are about managing cities and serving residents of cities regardless of migration status. Some policies state that local government agencies will provide services to residents without inquiring into citizenship status, and others reject local law enforcement collaboration with federal migration agents because it undermines the police force’s primary purpose of community safety.

The supervisors voted to turn minors who had been convicted of felonies over to federal migration authorities, as they had done with adults convicted of felonies. Apparently this decision comes on the heels of some high profile cases involving migrants, and so the vote represents a politically palatable way of responding to charges of irresponsibility. What the vote shows is the typical way in which law-and-order lawmaking happens. The exception, or bad apple, is used to make sweeping changes that affect far more people. Within the context of widening definitions of what is a felony, the war on drugs, and the conflation of youth of color with gang membership, such a policy may well affect far more folks than prevent violent acts. Meanwhile, when agents of inherently violent institutions such as the military or prisons act violently, they are called bad apples. In both cases, the exceptionality with which violence is treated individualizes violence and individualizes solutions rather than situating them within broader state and structural violence.

I have not been following the story closely enough, but apparently the change in policy regarding minors could jeopardize the broader set of sanctuary policies in San Francisco. This concerns me because of the city’s history in supporting and defending such policies. If such policies are being whittled away there, it portends more legal challenges and popular battles elsewhere. It also represents a moment when there could be a broader discussion about the effectively punitive nature of deportation, and punishment more broadly.