State and Local Immigration Law Research

Ayers points out how states and municipalities engage extensively with federal law enforcement through sanctuary city conversations and how local law enforcement bodies can respond to ICE in a variety of ways, including actively resisting, remaining neutral, and actively assisting. States have immense power to influence the daily lives of immigrants, for example by increasing protections for immigrant children separated from their families and through lawsuits filed against the federal government on immigration issues.

Weiner welcomes the State's proactive stance in providing public benefits in places where the federal government has stepped back because of the positive impact this has on the safety and economic vitality of families and communities. Immigrants contribute to shared resources, for example by paying taxes and helping stem population loss, currently a huge concern in Upstate New York. Immigrant victims of crimes can be fearful of reporting the incidents to law enforcement, making us all less safe.

Click here for a summary of the GLC's Anderson Breakfast Series panel discussion on this topic

Click here to see the GLC's Explainers on Immigration Law and Policy

Albany's Police Chief Insists City is Complying with Immigration Law (NewsChannel 13 | Jan. 25, 2018)

• Ava Ayers, the Director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, has a few ideas [on why the city of Albany was one of 23 municipalities in the state to receive a letter from the DOJ this week requesting documents showing whether their law enforcement official are restricting information sharing with federal immigration].

  "One is because they think there might in fact be more information that hasn't already been provided," Ayers said. "And the other is to put pressure on cities that identify themselves as sanctuaries."

• "If you're somebody who's on TPS [temporary protective status] right now and lucky enough to have a lawyer you can talk to, you should be talking to them about other statuses you can apply for," said Ava Ayers, professor and director at Albany Law School. "But TPS is one of the less desirable forms of status, so if somebody had another basis my guess is they already would have been applying for it."

• "All of this is very much a gray area because nobody has tried it before," said Ava Ayers, an Albany Law School director and professor. "Federal government cannot compel states, or localities, to implement a federal government program."
  
  Ayers said this argument was tested when it came to background checks for firearms. It was determined a federal law can't be passed saying state officials must perform background checks, because the state is a separate entity, he said.
  
  "The federal government can't tell state law enforcement to inquire about people's immigration status, report back to the feds about immigration status," Ayers said. "That would be like deputizing state officials against their will."

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​"[The specific legalities of sanctuary cities is] an issue that one needs to be a lawyer to fully understand," Albany Law School director and professor Ava Ayers said, "and I doubt very much if there's any lawyer in the world who would claim to understand it because of how complicated everything gets when you start talking about how immigration law overlaps with other kinds of law."

• ​​​​​​​Albany Law Professor Ava Ayers is moderating the talk [on sanctuary cities]. "I think a lot of people don't know what the term [sanctuary city] means because there really is no agreed on meaning for the term. It can mean detaining or not detaining non-citizens. It can mean cooperating with federal enforcement authorities. It can mean providing some sort of affirmative support to immigrants, like providing lawyers for people who are facing deportation, or sometimes it can just be a moral statement: you declare yourself a sanctuary jurisdiction because you want to send a message, so it can mean all of that and more."