Prison Official: North Dakota Not at Risk of Losing Federal Funds Over “Sanctuary City” Actions
Last week it was reported that the Department of Justice would be notifying jurisdictions that they would be losing federal funds if they didn’t cooperate with federal authorities in identifying and apprehending illegal immigrants.
“Today, the DOJ notified local and state law enforcement agencies across America that they will no longer be eligible for federal law enforcement grants unless they certify under oath that their local or state laws do not interfere ‘in any way’ with requests for immigration information from federal authorities,” Texas Rep. John Culberson, a Republican who has made this issue something of a hobby horse, announced on Friday.
You can read his letter here.
[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]”No, this will have no impact on our state facilities as we have always complied with all reporting requirements and detainers,” she told me.[/mks_pullquote]
In the past North Dakota has been identified as a “sanctuary state” in data put out by the Center for Immigration Studies. This prompted several of you SAB readers to contact me wondering if North Dakota would be impacted by this DoJ action.
In a word, the answer is no.
State officials have maintained that the CIS data is inaccurate, as far as North Dakota is concerned, though CIS has refused to correct it as has Breitbart.com, a conservative news website which touted the data.
On Friday I reached out to Leann Bertsch, Director of North Dakota’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and asked her about Culberson’s announcement and whether North Dakota would be impacted by it.
“No, this will have no impact on our state facilities as we have always complied with all reporting requirements and detainers,” she told me.
In summary, it doesn’t appear as though North Dakota will have any problems with this new directive from the federal government, because North Dakota is not a sanctuary state.
