Quasimodo declaims from the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in 15th century Paris, after he has swooped down from the dizzying heights of the Cathedral to rescue Esmeralda, a gypsy Romani street dancer, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”
Emile Zola’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1482) gave birth to
a stirring 1939 film rendition of the romantic novel depicting a rescue scene that remains one of the most stirring defenses
of unjust ravaged innocence.
Zola was feverishly courageous. It
was he who confronted France’s insipient anti-Semitism – always with us in one
form or another – in his attack on France’s judicial system. “J’Accuse” (I
Accuse) was a splendid and successful defense of French Army General Staff
officer Alfred Dreufus, sentenced for espionage to lifelong penal servitude on
Devil's Island in French Guiana.
Both Dreufus and the fictional
character Esmeralda were, it should not be necessary to point out, innocent
victims of a judicial and clerical force that had wandered from its legal and
moral principles.
In the Old Testament, the
sanctuary was the place where sacrifices were offered to God, the physical place
where God and his holy representatives met in worship. In the New Testament,
the holy sanctuary similarly was the
place, a specific location in a Christian church, where God and man
liturgically met to celebrate a holy union. When Quasimodo cries out
“Sanctuary!” he is placing innocence under the protection of a specific God
frequented place that people, Christian or not, have traditionally regarded as
inviolable because it is a place that has been sanctified – a sacred place. The
very word “sanctuary” has about it a religious aura that does not, and cannot,
apply in its use in the expression “sanctuary state” or “sanctuary city.”
In a recent front page top of the
fold story – “State back on ‘sanctuary’ list”
-- the Hartford Courant tells us that
Connecticut “is back on a federal list of ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ that the
Department of Homeland Security has determined impedes federal immigration
enforcement.
In his most recent statement,
Attorney General William Tong does not claim unequivocally that the targets of
Homeland Security, citizens of other countries who have crossed the U.S. border
illegally and so remain unprocessed, are innocent of any illegalities. Instead,
he says that Connecticut should not be regarded by Homeland Security as a
sanctuary state because, according to the Courant, “In a statement Tuesday,
Tong repeated the sentiment that Connecticut does not qualify as a sanctuary
state. ‘There is nothing in our laws or statutes that says Connecticut is a
‘sanctuary’ state,’ said Tong. ‘We are not. That is a term with no legal
meaning, and the ‘characteristics’ listed here [MORE] are a concocted fiction
of the Trump Administration. This was true back in May when Trump first issued
and retracted this erroneous list, and it remains true today.’”
Tong’s claim is that Connecticut
appears in error on a list of sanctuary states. He further implies that
Connecticut’s Democrat Party supported Trust Act, passed first in 2013 and
updated in 2019, does not impede the federal government in executing its own
federal responsibilities. The Trust Act
simply “maintains Connecticut’s sovereignty by preventing [the] deputization
[sic] of local and state law enforcement for immigration enforcement.”
The Trust Act, the Courant tells
us, “prevents state and local officials, including police, from sharing
information with ICE [operative word] unnecessarily,
from detaining suspected immigrants for ICE arrest without a judicial warrant
or when the individual is convicted of an A or B felony or is on a terrorist
watch list, and from allowing ICE agents entry into jails and courthouses.”
And we are told, “State
legislators updated the [Trust] Act this session, allowing individuals to sue over
alleged violations of the law [emphasis mine], but also adding 13
crimes for which law enforcement can comply with a federal detainer request.”
To the untutored ear – that is: to
an ear not attached to the partisan head of a politician -- all of this sounds
very much like sovereign state interference, a state imposition that impedes
the federal government from executing federal law.
Are we to number illegal
immigrants or those who represent their interests among the numbers of people
that are allowed to sue the federal government for “alleged violations” of the
Trust Act?
In what sense may we deem it
“unjust” to enforce a just federal law? Syrupy rhetoric alone cannot repeal a
just law. If Tong wishes to provide sanctuary to illegal migrants, he may
advise the Connecticut General Assembly, overwhelmingly Democrat, to construct
a law that would accomplish that purpose. In that case, however, Tong could no
longer claim that Connecticut is not a sanctuary state.
Even without such a law, Tong’s
claim is partisan tomfoolery.
Republicans got this one right:
Connecticut’s Trust Act is the problem it purports to cure.
The Trust Act negates the enforcement of federal law.
State Representative Doug Dubitsky
condemned the legislation shortly after it was passed: “The Trust Act is a
travesty. It is an insult to the people of this state. The very purpose of the
Trust Act is to prevent criminals from being taken and arrested by federal law
enforcement for federal crimes … We don’t want them here. We don’t want them in
our cities. We want them caught, and we want them to be deported. Why would we
want to make it harder for federal law enforcement to do just that?”
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FROM CC -- To the untutored ear –
that is: to an ear not attached to the partisan head of a politician -- all of
this sounds very much like sovereign state interference, a state imposition
that impedes the federal government from executing federal law.
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