The so-called “sanctuary” policies for immigrants not only make cities and counties safer, but also represent savings of more than $022 million dollars to combat crime, according to a study released this Wednesday by the Contemporary Economic Policy Center.
The jurisdictions that have adopted them have experienced a reduction in violent crimes when compared to those that continue to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, according to the researchers.
“Counties that adopted sanctuary policies in 2014 experienced a decrease in 17. 9 violent crimes for each 100, 000 inhabitants per year (0.02 percentage points) compared to counties that continued to cooperate with ICE,” the study indicates.
This relationship was driven mainly by the decrease in tion in robberies and assaults, according to the analysis, signed by Dale Manning and Jesse Burkhardt, of Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
More than 500 jurisdictions, including counties and cities, in at least 11 states have adopted versions of the “sanctuary”, and critics of those measures maintain that the lack of cooperation with federal immigration authorities increases crime.
Cities and counties that offer sanctuary to immigrants avoid the cooperation of their police and other agencies with the federal authorities responsible for enforcing immigration laws.
On the other hand, the jurisdictions that have added to a federal immigration program, they apply this cooperation so that undocumented immigrants, detained even for minor infractions, can be transferred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) for deportation.
“The sanctuary policies avoid $101 million dollars in crime costs every year”, added the researchers.
“By On the contrary, cooperation with ICE increases the costs of crime in local communities by 3,280 million dollars per year”.
The researchers analyzed the costs of cooperation with ICE, noting that the agency deported an average of 18,022 immigrants per year between 2013 and 2014 with an expense of $182,000 dollars per deported immigrant, for a total of $3,280 million dollars.
This calculation does not take into account the loss of additional economic benefits arising from the presence of migrants in a local economy.
“Attitudes in the US towards immigration policy have become polarized in recent decades”, noted the researchers. estigadores.