Opinion
By Jennifer Bash
Sanctuary cities are sold as compassionate. Humane. The moral high ground.
In reality, they remove accountability. And what fills that vacuum is chaos.
When a city or state refuses to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, it does not make enforcement disappear. It makes it harder, messier, and far more dangerous. Instead of a quiet transfer from a local jail to ICE custody, people are released back into the community. ICE still has a legal obligation to act, so enforcement shifts into parking lots, apartment complexes, traffic stops, and workplaces.
Enforcement doesn’t end. It gets louder.
That isn’t mercy. It’s dysfunction. And it’s a dysfunction chosen by leaders who know better.
Right now in Minnesota, officials are elevating two people who intentionally inserted themselves into a federal operation that tragically ended in death. They’re being framed as heroes. Meanwhile, there exists a list, an incomplete one, of 944 Americans killed in crimes involving people who were in this country illegally. Those names don’t trend. Their families don’t get press conferences. Their stories don’t become movements.
That inversion didn’t happen by accident.
After 9/11, the country demanded to know who was in our nation and why. That’s why Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created. Not out of cruelty. Out of the basic expectation that a country should know who is inside its borders and be able to enforce its own laws.
Somewhere along the way, enforcing the law itself became framed as the harm. The damage caused by refusing to enforce it faded into the background.
Sanctuary policies don’t nullify federal law. They splinter it into a patchwork of defiance that forces enforcement out of order and into chaos.
When local agencies refuse to cooperate, ICE doesn’t stop. It loses the safest option: custody transfers. What replaces that is field enforcement, which means more visibility, more disruption, more volatility and more risk for everyone involved.
Leaders in sanctuary jurisdictions know this. They are briefed on it. They are warned about it. And they choose it anyway.
In Minnesota, that framing is coming from Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who have publicly condemned federal operations while validating public interference as righteous. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has doubled down on the city’s “Welcoming City” posture while city-funded groups actively mobilize residents during enforcement activity. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass has warned communities ahead of operations and amplified resistance messaging. New York, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver. The names change, but the posture is the same.
Chicago shows what this looks like in practice.
The city’s “Welcoming City” policies already bar cooperation with federal authorities in nearly all circumstances. But in recent years, especially during Trump-era enforcement, Chicago’s leadership and city-funded organizations moved beyond non-cooperation and into active resistance.
Residents are warned when ICE is in the area. “Know Your Rights” campaigns are timed to enforcement surges. Networks are promoted that track agents, show up, film, surround, and obstruct.
That’s not neutrality. That’s mobilization and activism.
Instead of saying, “We’ll fight this in court,” these leaders say, “You fight it in the street.”
They convince ordinary people that stepping into law enforcement operations is civic virtue. They condition neighbors to believe they’re helping by inserting themselves into volatile situations they’re not trained to handle. They BRAINWASH the public into thinking disruption is compassion and risk is righteousness.
And when something goes wrong, when a situation turns volatile, when someone gets hurt, they point to the outcome and say, “See? Enforcement is dangerous.”
But they created the conditions.
They taught people to interfere.
They framed obstruction as heroism.
They turned federal law into a street spectacle.
Why?
Because chaos is politically useful.
It creates viral footage.
It fuels outrage.
It keeps Trump at the center of the villain narrative.
These leaders aren’t naïve. They know exactly what happens when untrained civilians insert themselves into law enforcement operations. They know it raises the risk for everyone involved. And they choose it anyway because the political payoff is higher than the human cost.
That isn’t compassion. It’s exploitation.
Which raises the most obvious question of all: if this is so righteous, so moral, so urgent, why aren’t Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Brandon Johnson, or Karen Bass out there themselves “standing up” to ICE?
Where is the governor when residents are confronting agents?
Where is the mayor when civilians are surrounding vehicles?
Where are the officials who issue the statements and hold the press conferences?
They’re behind podiums.
Behind cameras.
Behind other people.
They encourage neighbors to step into unpredictable encounters with trained federal agents, yet they never put themselves between those agents and the people they claim to protect. They outsource the danger. They moralize the risk. They keep their hands clean while others bleed.
If they truly believed what they say, they’d be the ones out there, rather than asking their own citizens to do their job for them. Not tweeting. Not posturing. Not condemning from a distance. If they honestly felt so strongly, they’d be standing in front of the operations they call immoral.
They aren’t.
These policies don’t protect immigrants. They protect politicians from accountability. They shift risk onto neighborhoods, onto law enforcement, onto families who never get a second chance. They even endanger federal agents by forcing enforcement into uncontrolled environments.
And they harm legal immigrants the most. The ones who followed the rules, waited their turn, and now watch a system reward disorder while punishing compliance.
This isn’t even a new playbook, and it isn’t limited to immigration. You can see the same pattern with almost any emotionally charged issue. Police shootings. Race. Gender. Climate. Guns. Pick a headline that makes your stomach drop and your heart race. Now look at when it suddenly became everywhere.
In 2015 and 2016 it was sanctuary cities and policing. In 2018 it was “Abolish ICE.” In 2020 it was race and law enforcement in the middle of a presidential election. The details change, but the timing rarely does. You don’t have to agree with me to verify this. Just open your mind long enough to look. Type the year and the issue into any search bar and watch how reliably these flashpoints line up with campaign seasons. Tragedy becomes narrative. Narrative becomes movement. Movement becomes leverage. These moments aren’t random. They’re amplified, framed, and weaponized because leaders know outrage motivates voters. This isn’t compassion. It’s campaigning.
A nation can be humane and still enforce its laws. What it cannot survive on is symbolism masquerading as governance. When leaders refuse to cooperate, refuse to acknowledge risk, and refuse to own the consequences, they are not being brave. They are making decisions that get other people hurt. This isn’t about mercy. It’s about midterms. And people are dying so politicians can win a headline.
Jennifer Bash didn’t set out to become a political commentator but once she started paying attention, she didn’t stop. After voting for the first time later in life, politics went from background noise to a full-time curiosity, and eventually, a calling. Today, she breaks down news and policy with clarity, skepticism, and zero patience for performative outrage. Her goal isn’t to tell you what to think, but to make sure you actually understand what’s happening. Click here to subscribe to Reasonable Arguements.
