WASHINGTON—Leaders in Gary, Ind., have decided to repeal the city’s “welcoming ordinance” that harbored illegal aliens, a vindication for the Immigration Reform Law Institute’s (IRLI) years-long efforts to reverse the policy.
Gary became the second Indiana city in less than a month to repeal such an ordinance. East Chicago, Ind., voted to repeal its own ordinance on July 30.
By adopting the ordinances, both jurisdictions had been in violation of Indiana’s law banning sanctuary cities. State Attorney General Todd Rokita had sued East Chicago, and was threatening to sue Gary prior to the repeal.
In 2017, IRLI filed suit against the City of Gary, its Mayor and its Common Council members in Indiana’s Lake County Circuit Court to challenge the City’s sanctuary. In 2011, IRLI attorneys had helped write Indiana’s statewide ban on sanctuary jurisdictions, which requires local law enforcement to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ordinance forbade local officials from informing federal officers, even when asked, when aliens in local jails will be released, and blocked federal officers from entering local jails to assume custody of criminal aliens. By interfering with federal enforcement of immigration laws in these and other ways, IRLI had claimed the ordinance violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
“Indiana has become a great success story for the repeal of illegal and dangerous sanctuary policies,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “Where state laws against sanctuary policies exist, state attorneys general can bring tremendous positive change by compelling local jurisdictions to comply with the law. The Indiana model needs to be emulated in other states to push back against the crime, overcrowding and lawlessness we are seeing in too many cities today.”
