33.2 - Good News: Teamsters Local is a "sanctuary" union; California is a "sanctuary" state

Good News: Teamsters Local is a "sanctuary" union; California is a "sanctuary" state

We've also got some Good News on matters related to immigration.

For one thing, on September 13, Teamsters Joint Council 16, an umbrella group of 27 union locals representing 120,000 workers around the New York City area and in Puerto Rico, passed a resolution declaring itself a "sanctuary union." It will not assist federal immigration agents in deporting its members and will proactively provide trainings, legal assistance, and organize support for immigrant Teamsters.

This followed the deportation of Eber Garcia Vasquez, who had been working as a Teamster for 26 years and was deported despite having no criminal record, reporting in once a year regarding his request for asylum, and doing everything else he was supposed to do.

So much for the "bad hombres" bull, as even some ICE agents are admitting, saying the practice is to arrest and deport people because they can, not because those people are a danger, and doing it even as Jeff "Not a racist, not me, nope" Sessions foams at the mouth about how sanctuary policies put us all in danger from "predators" because "a sanctuary city is a trafficker, smuggler, or gang member's best friend" while he repeatedly lies about a non-existent rise in violent crime, which in fact is at the lowest level in several decades.

But if Jeffykins is that upset about sanctuary cities, he must be absolute apoplectic about California, which on September 16 made itself a sanctuary state. Although the bill as passed is not as strong as the version first proposed, it still is the most wide-ranging such law in the US.

And if that didn't make him pop a few blood vessels, maybe this did: On September 15, a federal judge in Chicago issued a nationwide injunction against TheRump's effort to smack down sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds for public safety programs.

District Judge Harry Leinenweber found that penalizing cities for protecting undocumented immigrants was both unlawful and unconstitutional and that Sessions doesn't have the authority to impose such conditions on the program.

The judge made the injunction national because, he wrote in his ruling, there is "no reason to think that the legal issues present in this case are restricted to Chicago or that the statutory authority given to the attorney general would differ in another jurisdiction."

The decision follows one in California in April, also about the attempt to end aid to sanctuary cities, and a related one in Texas in July; that one addressed a Texas state law allowing police to inquire about a person's immigration status even during routine interactions. In both those cases, as the newest one in Chicago, justice for immigrants prevailed.

Which only makes sense, not only legally and morally, but logically: Police around the country often support sanctuary cities because that allows immigrants to report crimes without fearing retaliation or deportation, which contrary to the bigoted xenophobic ranting of such as Jeff Sessions, actually makes those cities safer.