Silver State Times

The crisis at the border has worsened more-so this year than any year before. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has used sanctuary cities, or places with laws that tend to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or prosecution, despite federal immigration laws, to bring the border crisis to Democrat leaders' backyards. The state of Nevada currently has two counties that are considered "sanctuary" for immigrants in the country illegally. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) has a history of advocating for these cities.

In February 2017, Cortez Masto filed a bill that would roll back former President Donald Trump’s executive order to defund so-called “sanctuary” cities and counties, according to The Las Vegas Review Journal. As the first bill the Democrat senator filed, Cortez Masto made the claim, “President Trump’s divisive and racist executive order is a threat to the safety and security of our hardworking families and immigrant communities, and must be rescinded,” at a Capitol Hill news conference.

In 2020, Cortez Masto signed a letter to Trump put together by leading Democrats which labeled his immigration policies as doing “grievous harm” to the nation’s “noble tradition” of providing refugees and ethnic minorities asylum from “political persecution” and “unsafe environments where their lives are at risk.” Vice President Kamala Harris was among the 30 Democrats that signed this letter.

The State of Nevada currently has two confirmed sanctuary cities and counties: Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, and Washoe County, which is home to Reno. Each sanctuary city operates with its own paperwork and detainment requirements and policies.

Beginning in early August, Abbott has sought to bring the border crisis to other parts of the U.S. by sending bus loads of asylum-seekers from the Texas border to sanctuary cities across the nation, as noted by Carine Hajjar from The Wall Street Journal. Hajjar said Abbott began sending them to major cities such as "New York, Chicago, Washington and other places that have policies discouraging local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities in enforcing immigration law."

"The true culprits are in Washington, not Austin. Congress hasn’t enacted meaningful reform to accommodate more legal immigration or stabilize the border, and the federal executive branch has fallen down on the job of administering existing law at the border and elsewhere," Hajjar said.

According to The Patriot Project, when Abbott launched his busing program back in April, he said, “We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

Biden administration officials announced Monday that over the past 11 months, U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigration arrests along the southern border, according to The Washington Post. This marks the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold. In addition, the latest figures show U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants attempting to cross over from Mexico in August alone. This puts authorities on pace to reach more than 2.3 million arrests during the government’s 2022 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

According to apsanlaw.com, sanctuary cities in the United States follow certain police procedures that shelters immigrants in the country illegally. The term "sanctuary city" is most commonly used for cities that do not permit municipal funds or resources to be applied in federal immigration law enforcement.