Re “Small’s Intellectual Approach to Sanctuary Cities”

On the matter of becoming a sanctuary city, which the City Council will decide at the end of this month, Councilman Thomas Small said a recent meeting with two Northern California state legislators provided lasting clarification for him.

After speaking with Assemblymen Rob Bonta of Alameda and Evan Low of Oakland, “it clarified for me that there is strength in numbers, particularly in California,” Mr. Small said.

“Our meeting made me less concerned that we could become an independent target” for critics of sanctuary cities, including the federal government.

Here is the central reason Mr. Small felt relieved:

“Afterwards, I felt much more strongly that we can go ahead and become a sanctuary city without a huge risk of being singled out and having funds withheld from us.”

Mr. Small believes officially sanctioning Culver City as a sanctuary city at the March 27 Council meeting “is certainly the moral thing to do, the ethical thing to do.”

He said that the fast mushrooming concept of sanctuary cities is about “defending American values and the rights of citizens and non-citizens that have been conferred here in America throughout our history. The current administration,” Mr. Small said, “is in danger of impinging on those rights. It is incumbent on us to defend those values and rights.”

He acknowledged that “there were a great number of deportations under President Obama. I am afraid there will be even more under President Trump.”
In the next three weeks, said the Councilman, “we need to assess what the risk is.
“To be responsible, we need to know exactly how much we might pay for this,” the amount of funding the Washington government may withhold.