Lawsuit Challenges Austin's Sanctuary Status

Jim Forsyth:

The family of murdered St. Edwards University freshman Virginia Garcia have filed suit against the city of Austin, claiming Austin's status as a so called 'sanctuary city' led to Garcia's murder, 1200 WOAI news reported today.

The 18 year old Garcia, who was known as Jenny, was stabbed to death insider her northwest Austin home, and police arrested an illegal alien, David Diaz Morales, 20, whom they said was 'infatuated' with Garcia. Morales was also charged with burglarizing Garcia's home.

Attorney Matt Burns said Austin's very controversial policy of prohibiting police and other local officials from referring cases to federal authorities for immigration law violations and deportation led to Garcia's murder, and is also in violation of federal law.

"The Austin police department has both informal and written procedures which actually prohibit police officers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities," Burns said.

Burns said the fact that Morales re-entered the United States after being deported, and the fact that he had previously been charged in the sexual assault of a child, would have qualified him for immediate deportation, meaning that he would not have been in Austin to murder Jenny Garcia, but that didn't happen because of Austin's 'sanctuary' law.

"He had been deported from this country once and re-entered, which is a felony offense," Burns said. "And prior to the murder of Ms. Garcia, Mr. Morales had also been arrested in the alleged sexual assault of a 12 year old."

Morales is held in the Travis County jail without bond on a capital murder charge.

There are more than a dozen so called 'sanctuary cities' across the United States, from Portland Oregon to Chicago to Houston. The Sanctuary City policy generally forbids local law enforcement officers from checking on, or reporting, a person's immigration status. Austin passed its sanctuary city law in 1997. Supporters say it fosters 'trust' between officials and immigrants, and say they're afraid that without such protections, illegals would be unwilling to report crimes and would become easy prey for criminals.

But Burns says Sanctuary City laws violate federal statute.

"Cities, counties, local governments are forbidden from prohibiting, or in any way restricting, their employees from communicating with federal immigration authorities," Burns said. "The city of Austin's policies are clearly in violation of that."

Congress has repeatedly rejected proposals to deny certain types of federal funding to Sanctuary Cities in an effort to get them to rethink their law.

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