City officials in Louisville, Kentucky, have agreed to comply with the Trump administration’s 48-hour immigration detainer requests, thereby enabling the town to be removed from President Donald Trump’s “sanctuary city” list.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat, issued a statement on Tuesday, noting that he received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice in June explaining that the city has been placed on Republican President Trump’s “sanctuary cities” list.
“It stated that the Trump Administration deemed Louisville to be a ‘sanctuary city’ because we are in violation of federal law for not holding inmates in custody at our jail for up to 48 hours on what are called immigration detainers,” Greenberg explained.
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“A detainer is a federal document that asks a jail to hold a specific inmate, who is already in custody for a crime and is also unlawfully present in the United States, for extra time, to allow the federal government to take custody of that inmate.”
The 48-hour detainer is standard practice in Kentucky’s Department of Corrections and was standard practice for the Louisville Metro Corrections until 2017. Louisville is the only city in the state that doesn’t follow the practice and only provides about a five to 12 hours of notice to federal authorities before releasing inmates, the mayor said.
“I have been assured by the U.S. Department of Justice that, if we reinstate the 48-hour detainers for inmates who’ve been arrested for crimes, Louisville will be taken off the federal sanctuary city list,” Greenberg said.
He claimed the decision to adhere to 48-hour detainer requests doesn’t change how the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections operates, adding that it “is only about inmates who are arrested for crimes, are booked in our jail, and are subject to deportation notices.”
Having the federal government remove Louisville from their “sanctuary city” list is “critical,” the mayor said, noting that cities on the list have been subject to “a terrifying increase in raids by ICE, including mass raids.”
“I’ve talked with leaders within our immigrant community before I made this decision,” Greenberg added. “I heard their fears loud and clear about current federal policies and ICE actions. I also heard that they want Louisville off the federal sanctuary city list.”
“I believe we will best protect our law-abiding immigrant community and our entire city by focusing the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement actions on the few inmates in our jail who have been arrested for committing crimes and are subject to deportation.”
Since Trump took office in January, U.S. immigration authorities have initiated multiple efforts throughout the country to crack down on illegal immigration, including increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, over a dozen states, the District of Columbia as well as over 200 cities and counties in the United States have sanctuary policies in place to protect those who enter the U.S. illegally.
In April, Trump posted a statement saying that his administration was “working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding” from sanctuary cities, labeling them “Death Traps” that “protect criminals, not the victims.”
While the Trump administration initially posted a list online of such sanctuary jurisdictions in late May, the list was eventually removed because several entries were not sanctuary cities.
