The New York Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, will announce on Thursday that he is issuing Legal guidance to Local Governments detailing how they can resist cooperating with the Federal Immigration authorities under the Trump Administration.

Cities including Albany, Kingston, Rochester, Syracuse, and White Plains plan to use Schneiderman’s Legal analysis to reaffirm their status as so-called Sanctuary Cities.

The move comes despite uncertainty over whether President-Elect Trump will deport millions of Undocumented Immigrants or build a wall along the Mexican border after he takes office on Friday.

The lack of clarity has not stopped liberal New York politicians like Schneiderman, a Democrat, from moving to erect a wall of their own, designed, in this case, to keep Trump away from Immigrants.

Other efforts are afoot at the State level: Gov. Cuomo, a Democrat, announced proposals last week that included creating a Legal-Defense Fund for Immigrants. And a Bill from State Senator Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, would make Immigrants members of a Protected Class under the State’s Human Rights Law, shielding them from discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

Several States, including California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont already require that Local Law Enforcement Agencies limit their cooperation with Federal requests to detain Immigrants.

Proposed Legislation in California would expand Immigration protections even further, banning all State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies from answering requests from the Immigration authorities and offering free Legal assistance to Undocumented Immigrants facing Deportation. With Democratic Super-Majorities in both Houses of the State Legislature and a Democratic Governor, the package is expected to pass.

The more patchwork approach taking shape in New York, Agency by Agency, City by City, reflects the reality that lofty ideas on either end of the Political spectrum often bump into here: To become Law, every proposal must pass a State Legislature where power is divided between Republicans and Democrats, before being approved by the Governor. This is due to a few Democrats in the Senate that votes with the Republicans.

Gianaris’s bill faces an uncertain Legislative fate, as does a longstanding proposal known as the Dream Act that would make Tuition Assistance for State College students available to Undocumented Immigrants.

Even as some Cities in New York proclaim their Sanctuary Status, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office recently said it would stop asking for Judicial Warrants before detaining people whom the Federal Immigration Authorities were seeking to Deport. Many Cities turn people arrested within their boundaries over to County Jails, and it is unclear what would happen if a Sanctuary City’s policies conflict with a County or Sheriff’s office without such a policy.

Hence Schneiderman’s decision to skip the State Legislative process and go directly to Local Governments with his office’s Policing Guidelines, which combine recommendations for Local Laws or Policies with a Legal analysis of what Local Law Enforcement Agencies can and cannot do when the Federal Authorities seek their help with Immigration Enforcement.

“We’re going to do everything we can do to make sure that any jurisdiction that wants to protect its immigrant population knows what it can do within the parameters of the law,” Schneiderman said.

The principle underpinning the guidance, recognized by the Supreme Court, is that “just being here without documents is not in and of itself a crime,” he said.

The recommendations cover situations in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection, Federal Agencies responsible for enforcing Immigration Law, ask Local Agencies for help.

Several Cities are moving toward adopting the Guidelines or using Schneiderman’s Legal analysis to shore up their existing Sanctuary policies. Their argument: If Residents are afraid of reporting crimes to the Police or serving as witnesses because of their Immigration status, Public Safety is compromised for everyone. Trump, insisting that Sanctuary policies allow crime to flourish, has vowed to strip funding from Sanctuary Jurisdictions.

“We want people to report crime, we want people to feel as though the police are there to protect them,” said Kathy Sheehan, the Mayor of Albany, a Democrat whose City Government and Police Department do not ask about Immigration status. “We are not there to become an extra arm of what is a federal responsibility.”

The guidelines recommend prohibiting Local officers from stopping, questioning, investigating or arresting people based solely on their Immigration status, and limiting their ability to ask crime victims and witnesses about their Immigration status. The Guidelines also say that Local Agency Staff Members and resources should not be used to help create a Federal Registry based on Ethnicity, Religion or other Categories, nor should they be used to perform the functions of Immigration Agents.

Schneiderman’s office recommends that Agencies cooperate with Federal requests to detain Immigrants beyond the date they would otherwise be released in only three instances:

- If a Judge signs a Warrant.
- If the Authorities can show Probable Cause that an Immigrant illegally re-entered the Country after being deported and was convicted of a serious crime.
- If there is Probable Cause to believe an Immigrant is involved in Terrorist activity.

According to the Legal analysis, Local Agencies are not required to comply with a simple Federal request to detain individuals unless there is a Judicial Warrant.

Likewise, the Guidelines recommend limiting the circumstances under which Local Agencies can release Personal information about individuals in custody to the Federal Authorities or make those Individuals available for questioning by the Immigration Authorities.

At least 39 Cities and 364 Counties around the United States already count themselves as Sanctuary Jurisdictions, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, though they vary in how severely they restrict Immigration Enforcement.

Mayor Stephanie Miner of Syracuse, whose Police Department also does not ask about Immigration Status, said she would depend on the Legal Guidance offered by Schneiderman’s office if Trump followed through on his proposal to create a Deportation Force. “We want to make sure that we understand our rights under that authority, so that if and when he does that, we’ll have the ability to legally fight that,” Miner, a Democrat, said. “We want to make it crystal clear that people should not be discriminated against based on their immigration status.”

For now, with voices on both sides of the issue emboldened by Trump’s impending inauguration, there remains plenty of opposition to affording Immigrants extra protection.

Mayor Steve Noble of Kingston got a taste of the new climate while battling over the past month to codify Sanctuary policies the City had been practicing for 15 years. “Now we have the legal backing to move forward and it kind of justifies it to folks that felt like maybe we were going out on a limb,” Noble, a Democrat, said. “This will help, I think, take the politics out of it and just say that this is the law.”

Asked if this was perhaps too optimistic a forecast, he laughed. “It’s good to dream, right?”











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