What's a 'sanctuary city,' and why should you care?

San Francisco is one of dozens of cities, counties and states across the country that have laws, policies or regulations that prevent employees from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts ...

The sanctuary movement is said to have grown out of efforts by churches in the 1980s to provide sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing violence at home amid reluctance by the federal government to grant them refugee status.

It's also a product of the long-running national immigration debate, in which officials in some more diverse and liberal communities sometimes take issue with aggressive immigration enforcement efforts.

What's the argument for sanctuary status?

Proponents say that by encouraging members of immigrant communities to work with police without fear of deportation, such policies help authorities improve public safety by helping authorities identify and arrest dangerous criminals who might otherwise go undetected.

"I firmly believe it makes us safer," San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper." ...

"Unfortunately, a lot of cities in this country have decided they don't want to cooperate with ICE," Julie Myers Wood, former assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told CNN on Monday. "They think that cooperating with ICE causes them problems with respect to the immigrant community and public safety, but in fact it does exactly the opposite, as we've seen here."

Such policies "ignore the fact that if the illegal aliens were removed from the U.S., they would not be here to become victims, and the predators would be out of the country, too," Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC, which opposes sanctuary policies, says on its website ...

In March, Saldana, the ICE director, drew heat from immigrant rights supporters after appearing at a congressional hearing to endorse efforts to rein in the sanctuary movement ...

CAIRCO Research

Sanctuary Cities in Colorado and the Sanctuary City of Denver