A sanctuary city is
generally defined as a municipality that refuses to use its police and criminal
justice system to aid in deportation of aliens.
This happened in
1931-1932, when President Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of Labor—a staunch
opponent of all forms of immigration, legal and illegal— launched a campaign in
Los Angeles to deport Mexicans.
Mexican government
sources suggest that over 300,000 were repatriated between 1930 and 1933.
Before the
Depression, farmers, labor unions,
eugenicists, and racists pushed for restrictions on Mexican immigration.
The American
Federation of Labor (AFL) and the National Club of America for Americans thought
that deporting Mexicans would free up jobs for U.S. citizens.
They were wrong.
After Mexicans were rounded up and deported, unemployment shot up to 32
percent. The problem was a vicious cycle of tariff disputes with trading
partners, not immigration.
The federal
government, in coordination with local governments, took steps to remove
Mexicans.
In his book Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great
Depression, Abraham Hoffman describes a scene where a federal official who
headed the deportation effort leaned on LA police to round-up Mexican men.
The
Chief of Police and LA County Sheriff refused. Their reasoning? They said that the
federal plan identified deportees on the basis of skin color only. Local law
enforcement feared lawsuits and expenses for false arrests.
The bottom line: Police— then and now— make arrests based on
probable cause. Being dark skinned and speaking Spanish are not probable cause
for an arrest (a requirement in the Fourth Amendment). That was true in 1931 … and it remains true in 2017.
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