What Sanctuary Policies Actually Do
A sanctuary jurisdiction refuses to honor an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer, which asks local jails to hold an alien for up to 48 hours after local charges resolve so federal officers can assume custody. The practical effect is to release deportable offenders back into the same neighborhoods where they committed their crimes.
The Center for Immigration Studies counted more than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States as of early 2025. They include major cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, plus dozens of counties that most Americans have never heard of. Each one operates under the same theory: local police should not participate in immigration enforcement because it erodes trust. That theory has never been proven by independent research. What has been proven is the body count.
The numbers are not small. In fiscal year 2023, ICE reported 170,590 administrative arrests and 142,580 removals. Each administrative arrest begins with a local custody event that could have produced a simple detainer. Sanctuary policies turn the majority of those holds into dead letters. The result is a conveyor belt that deposits gang members, drug dealers, and drunk drivers back onto the same blocks they terrorized.
In fiscal year 2024, Customs and Border Protection recorded roughly 1.5 million encounters along the southwest border, according to the agency's own data. That number does not count gotaways, who are detected but not intercepted. The Border Patrol has about 20,000 agents to cover nearly 2,000 miles of border and conduct interior enforcement support. When local agencies refuse to cooperate, those agents must chase the same criminals twice.
The Cost Is Measured in Lives and Dollars
The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated in 2023 that illegal immigration costs American taxpayers roughly $150.7 billion annually at the federal, state, and local levels, offset by about $32 billion in taxes paid. The net burden falls on public schools, emergency rooms, jails, and court systems that were already strained before the recent surge. Those are not abstract line items. They are classroom sizes, wait times, and bond hearings in communities that never voted for open borders.
Sanctuary defenders claim the policies improve public safety by encouraging victims to report crimes. The claim ignores that most ICE detainers are issued after a local arrest for a separate offense, not after a victim calls 911. In 2019, ICE reported that sanctuary policies forced the agency to arrest more than 2,000 criminal aliens at large in communities rather than inside secure jails. Each at-large arrest carries risk to officers and bystanders that a simple jail transfer would avoid.
ICE's average daily detained population runs near 41,000, while the agency's budget for detention and removal is measured in billions. Yet capacity is meaningless if local jails will not hold the target long enough for pickup. Sanctuary cities create a nationwide game of catch and release played with human stakes.
The dollar figures are just as offensive. New York City alone has spent billions of dollars sheltering migrants, with daily costs reaching into the millions. Those resources could have funded pay raises for police, mental health beds, or veterans services. Instead, city leaders chose to house foreign nationals who entered the country illegally while lecturing taxpayers about compassion.
Congress Must Tie Grants to Cooperation
Congress should make every federal law enforcement grant contingent on local jurisdictions honoring ICE detainers and sharing arrest data with the Department of Homeland Security, because federal money should never subsidize jurisdictions that obstruct federal immigration law. Cities that refuse cooperation should keep their principles and lose their funding.
Supporters of sanctuary policies claim federalism protects their defiance. They are wrong. The Supreme Court has long held that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, but it has never held that local governments have a constitutional right to obstruct that enforcement. A city cannot take federal money, flout federal detainers, and then cry local control when the bill comes due.
The House has spent years debating border security while the border remained open. The Senate talks about comprehensive reform and then does nothing. Meanwhile, states such as Texas have deployed National Guard troops and installed concertina wire along the Rio Grande. Those are stopgap measures. A lasting fix requires interior enforcement, and interior enforcement requires local cooperation.
The FY2026 appropriations bills moving this month offer the chance to attach clear conditions. The Department of Justice's Community Oriented Policing Services program distributed hundreds of millions of dollars last year. The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program sent additional money to states and localities. None of it should reach a jurisdiction that will not perform the basic courtesy of notifying ICE before releasing a deportable criminal.
Border Patrol agents and ICE officers risk their lives for wages that private security firms would double. They do not need lectures from mayors about moral courage. They need backup. And backup starts with a phone call from the county jail.
