Keystone Today

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. Meanwhile, John Fetterman, lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, is on the record saying he fully supports sanctuary cities and believes they make everyone safer.

While speaking at West Chester University in January 2016, Fetterman made the claim, "Sanctuary cities is another policy that I very much support. Sanctuary cities statistically makes everybody safer, makes everybody better."

John Fetterman speaking at West Chester University in 2016. YouTube screenshot.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the state of Pennsylvania currently has 17 sanctuary cities and counties. Each sanctuary city operates with its own paperwork and detainment requirements and policies. The state's top three most-populated counties – Philadelphia, Allegheny and Montgomery – are on this list.

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.

The Patriot Project reported that 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 illegal immigrants. 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.