Maybe this whole sanctuary thing is not such a good idea.

As we stated recently on another comment thread (Web Link Mountain View is not and has never been a "sanctuary city."

"But in Mountain View, and all of Santa Clara County, immigration status is not taken into account by arresting officers unless a suspect is going to be charged with murder, robbery, sexual assault, assault with serous bodily injury, multiple burglaries or major fraud. Otherwise, as police spokesperson Liz Wylie said, the immigration status question isn't even on the county booking form."

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So, what would you call that?

Hi USA,

I don't know what I would call that, but I wouldn't call Mountain View a "sanctuary city," as that was an official term used by the city of San Francisco to describe a boneheaded policy which they've since abandoned.

In Mountain View, officials seem to be doing a sort of tightrope walk on the subject, even though some residents would like them to come down more strongly on one side or the other. The truth is, enforcement of our borders is a federal job -- our police and school officials aren't ICE -- and if local officials try to do the feds' job for them it could wind up making their other, everyday work much more difficult.

On the other hand, maybe a city policy could be enacted which at least helps ICE in some small capacity -- I don't know. It's a tricky issue and reasonable people can disagree about it.

There's a couple other items of interest here: 1) The immigrant status of these two suspects is unknown to you or to me, making this story a poor example when it comes to the immigration debate; 2) these guys are charged with assault, so the quote you've cited above seems to indicate that their immigration status WILL be taken into account.

Yes i have known about those two individuals from middle school(they never attended high school) and yes they are illegal immigrants. And both have younger brothers doing the same thing.

Maybe that is true, and maybe it is not. However, don't for a second think that their whole gang are illegal immigrants. You cannot blame everything on illegal immigration.

We have kids who were born here who do bad things. We have illegal immigrants here who do great things.

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