Peach Tree Times

The crisis at the border has worsened more this year than any year before. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has used sanctuary cities, or places with laws that tend to protect immigrants from deportation or prosecution, despite federal immigration laws, to bring the border crisis to Democrat leaders' backyards. Meanwhile, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia voted last year to fund sanctuary cities, five of which are in his own state.

According to his campaign website, Warnock advocates for comprehensive immigration reform that would fix what he believes is broken in our current system. He is also an advocate for management and oversight of ICE through ending the use of privatized prisons and combatting discrimination against immigrant communities.

In March 2021, Warnock joined other Senate Democrats in voting against Sen. Tom Cotton's amendment to the American Rescue Plan. When Cotton, a Republican representing Arkansas, brought it to the Senate floor, he stated, "Mr. President, my motion to commit is to send this bill back to the Finance Committee to adopt the common sense rule that should have been in there from the beginning that we are not going to give bailout money to sanctuary states and sanctuary cities." It was defeated 48-50. 

The state of Georgia currently has three confirmed sanctuary cities and counties: Clark, Clayton and Dekalb, where Atlanta is located. Each sanctuary city operates with its own paperwork and detainment requirements and policies. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that two of the state's top three most-populated counties — Cobb and Gwinnet — are also considered sanctuary because they are no longer participating in the 287(g) immigration program as of February 2021, stripping police departments of their authority to exercise federal immigration policy.

Beginning in early August, Abbott has sought to bring the border crisis to other parts of the U.S. by sending bus loads of asylum-seekers from the Texas border to sanctuary cities across the nation, as noted in an opinion piece by Carine Hajjar in the Wall Street Journal. Hajjar said Abbott began sending them to major cities such as "New York, Chicago, Washington and other places that have policies discouraging local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in enforcing immigration law."

"The true culprits are in Washington, not Austin," Hajjar wrote. "Congress hasn’t enacted meaningful reform to accommodate more legal immigration or stabilize the border, and the federal executive branch has fallen down on the job of administering existing law at the border and elsewhere."

According to The Patriot Project, when Abbott launched his busing program in April, he said, “We are sending them to the United States Capitol, where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

Biden administration officials announced Sept. 19 that over the past 11 months, U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigration arrests along the southern border, according to The Washington Post. This marks the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold. In addition, the latest figures show U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants attempting to cross over from Mexico in August alone. This puts authorities on pace to reach more than 2.3 million arrests during the government’s 2022 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

According to apsanlaw.com, sanctuary cities in the U.S. follow certain police procedures that shelters illegal immigrants. The term "sanctuary city" is most commonly used for cities that do not permit municipal funds or resources to be applied in federal immigration law enforcement.