Baraka: Sanctuary cities are the last line for the Constitution - New Jersey Globe

There is new thin blue line in America, formed by those of us who run the Trump-maligned sanctuary cities, those fighting to stop ICE to agents from violating the Constitution of our residents and ignoring local ordinances and law enforcement policies.

Our sanctuary cities need to create red lines, too, those that ICE can’t cross when it attempts to deny the Constitutional rights of all people on American soil, citizen or not; specifically, the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unwarranted search and seizure, and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of due process.

These lines are drawn to uphold democracy. The cities and states that allow these lines to be blurred or erased are following the president down the path to authoritarianism.

Last week, I signed an executive order that requires all Newark city employees to report any ICE activity on city property that seems abusive, unconstitutional, or are actions outside our own law enforcement policies.

It also prohibits our police and other law enforcement personnel from cooperating in immigration enforcement activities without a warrant or judicial order.

My reason is not to be belligerent. It’s to protect the people who live and work in my city.

Last week, ICE agents violated Newark police protocol by recklessly chasing a van being driven by an undocumented man. Newark abandoned high-speed car chases on city streets and state highways years ago because of the dangers they pose to the public.

Sure enough, the van chased by ICE struck several vehicles, including a rideshare car carrying three siblings. All were taken to the hospital and released. But the point is that it could have been much, much worse, resulting in death or serious injury, which it is exactly the tragic scenario we tried to avoid when our police abandoned these cowboy actions.

The two ICE killings in Minnesota violated every “use of deadly force” protocol used by responsible police agencies across the country. Homeland security can try to obliterate the facts with incendiary language like “domestic terrorism” but we know what we saw.

Alex Pretti was shot in the back while face down on the ground, disarmed and subdued by several agents. Renee Nicole Good was shot with both hands on her steering wheel after she followed ICE agents’ instructions to move her car, killed by an agent who walked in front of it.

The rush by the Trump Administration to build an invading army of ICE agents has led to a force poorly trained. In 2018, ICE agents went through a 20-week training course, similar to federal, state and local police academies. That has been cut to eight weeks, less than half, as Homeland Security races to hire 12,000 agents, some with no law enforcement experience.

This has proven to be dangerous and, as I said to the media, a “slap in the face” to all professional public safety training protocols, from the FBI to local police.

That slap also applies to the courts. Two weeks, ago, a U.S. District judge in New Jersey cited ICE for ignoring 52 court orders in the last two months. A Minnesota judge found 210 such violations. This is renegade behavior.

Two New Jersey Democratic legislators introduced a bill to put ICE on a choke leash by expanding residents’ rights to sue immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct.

Another bill would prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks, which is an intimidation tactic that often backfires. When police are covered with masks and military gear, two things happen. First, they are given a degree of anonymity. Second, they become dehumanized in the eyes of the protestors. Violent confrontation becomes inevitable. Pretti’s death is the last in a long line of these lessons, learned from the Civil Rights Era to the George Floyd protests.

In Jersey City recently an ICE agent attempting to detain people at public rail stop was asked by a councilman if he had a warrant.

“We don’t need to warrant, bro,” was the infamous reply. “Stop getting that in your head.”

It was a statement of equal parts of arrogance and lawlessness. It crosses a Constitutional line, and one of simple human decency.

This is the line our sanctuary cities must hold.