The late Ed Koch. The Irish could never be illegal in his city.
By Ray O’Hanlon
Back in the dim and distant past, that being 1988, an Irish government minister visiting New York was told by the city’s mayor, the indefatigable Ed Koch, that as far as he was concerned the Irish could never be illegal in his city.
Before and since that time, New York has indeed been a haven for the Irish, legal and undocumented alike.
The same can be said for a number of other major U.S. cities.
Even for those without full legal status as immigrants, so-called sanctuary cities offer hope and the kind of security that can only come when you can seek help from a police department that is not interested in your legal status, or lack thereof.
In New York, the policy of encouraging the undocumented and illegal to report crime to the police without fear of any negative implications in an immigration context is known as the “Koch Rule.”
The rule, born of a mayoral executive order, still applies today.
But it is coming under attack from the days-old Trump administration.
President Trump on Wednesday signed a series of executive orders dealing with immigration issues, including the matter of federal funding for cities that have proclaimed themselves to be sanctuaries for illegal residents.
But beyond funding, there is fear that city police departments could well be forced to abandon the “Koch Rule,” or its local equivalent.
In an editorial, the New York Times stated that the President Trump had outlined “a series of ominous regulatory changes” aimed at drastically expanding the detention of immigrants who entered the country with permission.
“He is also seeking to turn more local police and corrections officers into enforcers of immigration law, while threatening to withhold funding from jurisdictions that have sensibly refused to assume that role,” the editorial stated.
Count New York as being sensible in the eyes of the Times; Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles too.
In the case of Boston, Mayor Marty Walsh, the son of immigrants, is viewing Trump’s immigration orders as a virtual declaration of war against his city, describing the funding withdrawal threat as a "direct attack on Boston's people."
“We will not be intimidated by a threat to federal funding. We will not retreat one inch. To anyone who feels threatened or vulnerable, you are safe in Boston,” said Walsh, who added that City Hall would become a literal shelter for undocumented immigrants if push came to shove.
That has happened in the past in Boston under Mayors James Michael Curley and Ray Flynn, who once famously sheltered a group of defecting Polish sailors in City Hall.
When federal agents turned up to detain the sailors Flynn wouldn’t budge, telling the Feds that his police were bigger than theirs.
At one point in New York, during the George W. Bush administration, a shudder went through the undocumented community, the Irish included, when the Justice Department secured a legal ruling that would allow it to “deputize” state and local police departments as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Attorney Brian O’Dwyer, who then and today heads the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, stated in a letter to then Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the matter of police policy toward the undocumented was “of the deepest concern” to the Irish and all other immigrant communities in the city.
O’Dwyer’s interpretation of the Justice Department move at that time, and as outlined in his letter, was that police departments in various municipalities, including New York, “would fully cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report and apprehend any undocumented residents in their jurisdiction without distinction to whether the resident is accused of a crime.”
O’Dwyer wrote that “the proposal of the Attorney General [John Ashcroft] would set the clock back at least 20 years” and “have draconian consequences” in a city heavily dependent on immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
O’Dwyer referred in his letter to “near panic” occurring in the city’s immigrant communities as a result of signals from the Justice Department.
However, the NYPD duly explained that neither the Justice Department, nor itself, had undocumented immigrants in their sights just because they were out of status.
The view from One Police Plaza was that an undocumented individual would have to be already wanted on a federal felony charge before the NYPD became involved.
The matter of an individual’s immigration status would not, on its own, be of concern to the NYPD.
“The Justice Department is going after different people,” said a spokesman.
These were people with court orders against them and who were already wanted for federal felonies.
That was then and this is now.
The fear in the time of Trump is that all illegals and undocumented will, in some way or another, become “wanted.”
Hence the emerging battle lines being drawn by sanctuary cities between themselves and the new administration.
