House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan working on sanctuary city crackdown legislation

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, this week suggested that the panel he leads would hold a markup of a bill to crack down on sanctuary cities in the coming weeks, as major metropolitan areas continue to clash with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement.

“Sanctuary” jurisdictions refer to states, cities, and municipalities that have declared that they will not cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement and/or to instead place restrictions on the Feds' ability to conduct those enforcement actions in public spaces. 

Jordan stated that such jurisdictions include 11 states, 18 major cities, three counties, and the District of Columbia, collectively representing one-third of the population.

Illegal immigrants charged with crimes let out instead of allowing ICE to scoop them up

“We're looking at passing a bill to deal with this sanctuary jurisdiction issue,” Jordan said on the Just the News, No Noise television show. “We think we're going to have a markup in two weeks in our committee to address this. That may be, well, you know, there's various ways to look at it.”

Jordan went on to describe the difficulties of apprehending criminal immigrants when local law enforcement opt to release them onto the streets instead of flagging them for immigration enforcement.

“They got a guy in their jail. ICE knows it's an illegal migrant who's also been charged with some other crime, they get a notice saying it's a detainer notice saying, ‘Hey, if you're going to let this guy out, just give us a heads-up. Give us 48 hours. We'll come and arrest him there at the jail,’” he said. 

“Instead, they release him to the streets. That's a problem there. We should work at some way in our federal law that you can't do that. You have to work with federal law enforcement, when you have that scenario.”

Thus far, Jordan has not suggested a mechanism for punishing non-compliance on the part of the cities, but merely a requirement of contact with federal authorities on alien criminals.

The proposal, however, comes as the Department of Homeland Security appears poised to wrap up its operations in Minneapolis, Minn., one of the hot spots for anti-ICE demonstrations and a major sanctuary jurisdiction.

Minnesota has ranked among the most prominent holdouts on cooperating with federal law enforcement on deportations, though Border Czar Tom Homan has secured agreements with local jurisdictions to do so.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.