Trump incompetence leads to naming Anchorage a 'sanctuary city'
The third-rate character of the second Trump administration is on full display yet again with Department of Homeland Security hooey attacking Anchorage as a “sanctuary city.”
Kristi Noem, who always seems to be preparing for a costume party, placed the state’s largest city on her bogus list of 600 “lawless cities” that are run by “sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law.”
Kristi Noem poses in Phoenix, pointing a firearm at an agent’s head.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem dressed up as a firefighter while visiting Kodiak.
No cabinet member in U.S. history has had so many outfits—a firefighter with a fire hose, a law enforcement officer with a high-powered weapon and a cowgirl with a big hat.
It appears that she puts more thought into her clothes than the preparation of a list that purports to name cities run by lawbreakers who are hiding people she wants to deport.
Her list is riddled with errors, according to news reports from across the United States, befitting the shoddy research and incompetence that we’ve come to expect from Trump II, where it is better to try to look good than to be good.
Anchorage is not a sanctuary city. It never has been.
But rest assured that the inclusion of Anchorage on Noem’s hit list will perpetuate a lie that began nearly a quarter-century ago and continues to spread on the internet.
To understand, we must go back to the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.
The U.S. Congress, gripped by panic, approved the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act” in October 2001 with little debate.
As the months passed, people across the country began to realize that the so-called Patriot Act had many provisions that opened the door to violations of civil rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
In Fairbanks, two members of the city council—Scott Kawasaki and Donna Gilbert—who never agreed on anything before or after—supported a 2003 declaration that city dollars would not be used to back anything in the Patriot Act that violated the Bill of Rights.
Other Alaska communities did the same, including Anchorage, North Pole, Skagway, Gustavus, Juneau and Kenai.
Fairbanks Rep. David Guttenberg and John Coghill backed a statement that nearly every legislator voted for, which drew heavily on the Fairbanks measure and opposed “any portion of the USA Patriot Act that would violate the rights and liberties guaranteed equally under the state and federal constitutions.”
The resolution said state resources should not be used “for the enforcement of federal immigration matters, which are the responsibility of the federal government.”
It was a legislative resolution, not a statute, meaning that the contents would never carry the force of state law.
The Anchorage resolution said local government would not "Use municipal resources or institutions for the enforcement of federal immigration matters, which are the responsibility of the federal government."
The local and state governments called on the Congress to correct the Patriot Act to protect individual rights. There was nothing about “sanctuary cities,” a term without definition that meant whatever someone guessed.
On August 14, 2006, this report by the Congressional Research Service alleged in a footnote on page 26 that Anchorage and Fairbanks had “sanctuary policies,” but provided no details. The report also claimed that the state had a policy providing “sanctuary for unauthorized aliens.”
That went far beyond the 2003 state resolution and there was nothing in the Juneau debate that preceded the legislative vote to justify that claim.
On August 30, 2007, the Congressional Research Service deleted its sanctuary claims from a revised version of the report, but it failed to explain its error.
That did not stop people with access to the internet from repeating and amplifying claims about Alaska sanctuary cities. Right-wing talker Bill O’Reilly was a prime culprit.
O’Reilly, who says “trust is earned,” still falsely lists Fairbanks and Anchorage as sanctuary cities on his website.
Then there was a man in Ohio who got donations to start a website he calls the Ohio Jobs and Justice PAC, which propagated the lie about Fairbanks and Anchorage.
PAC does not mean political action committee on Steve Salvi’s amateur hour website, but “people against corruption.”
In 2007, when my late brother Pat was the chief of staff for Fairbanks City Mayor Steve Thompson, a legislative aide called him to ask if Fairbanks was a sanctuary city.
“What’s a sanctuary city?” my brother said, recounting the story to reporter Chris Eshleman.
The city mayor and council said the city would would not obstruct federal authorities.
In time, Fairbanks and Anchorage were removed from the Ohio list of sanctuary cities. A disclaimer was added to say this all started with the Congressional Research Service.
In Anchorage, after a dispute about the meaning of the 2003 resolution, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent wrote a letter in 2007 saying Anchorage was not a sanctuary city.
Still, the assembly rescinded the measure on a 7-4 vote that year, saying it would be OK to use municipal resources to cooperate with the feds on immigration.
In 2015, the issue arose again and the assembly approved a resolution saying Anchorage was not and had never been a sanctuary city.
In her press release attacking some 600 governments across the country, Noem attacked “sanctuary city politicians” and accused them of breaking the law. She suggested that criminal charges are in the offing.
A competent cabinet secretary would check the facts first.
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