WASHINGTON D.C. – Kansas 3rd District Congresswoman Sharice Davids and other Democrats on Friday failed to stop a bill which would strip certain federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” and other jurisdictions that aim to use those dollars to aid and abet illegal immigrants.
HR 5717 passed 219 to 186 on a roll call vote Friday morning with 12 Democrats joining Republicans in the majority. All ‘nay’ votes were Democrats. Davids is the only Democrat in the Kansas congressional delegation. Congressmen Estes, LaTurner and Mann all voted for the measure.
As of Sunday neither Davds nor her staff had returned emails from the Informer seeking comment on her vote.
SANCTUARY CITIES: A CONSTITUTIONAL ‘HELL NO’
With Democrats dominating the U.S. Senate and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s near ban on most legislative initiatives coming from the Republican-led House, the bill has little chance of ever becoming law. But it does focus attention on Congress members’ political leanings regarding the hot button issue of illegal immigration and federal funding to support it, as three years of Biden/Harris Administration mismanagement of the nation’s southern border and a massing illegal immigrant crisis in the country presses on voters heading into the November general elections.
Specifically, HR5717 makes a state or political subdivision of a state ineligible for any federal funds the jurisdiction intends to use to benefit non-U.S. nationals (i.e., aliens under federal law) who are unlawfully present, if the jurisdiction withholds information about citizenship or immigration status or does not cooperate with immigration detainers. Funds would be denied to any jurisdiction that has a law, policy, or practice that prohibits or restricts state or local governments from communicating or exchanging information regarding a person’s citizenship or immigration status, restricts complying with a valid immigration detainer from the Department of Homeland Security or prohibits the notification of DHS about an individual’s release from custody.
The funding restriction does not apply to a law, policy, or practice that only applies to an individual who comes forward as a victim of or a witness to a criminal offense.
The Congressional vote came at the end of a week in which police in Joplin and Kansas City Missouri were piecing together events that began with the Joplin carjacking murder of a 63 year-old Oklahoma man and the subsequent car jack shooting of a woman in Independence as well the pistol whipping another female there, all alleged to be the work of two brothers, Honduran nationals ages 26 and 20, who crossed the southern border illegally. Both were under arrest as of Friday.
A Kansas law pushed by then-Attorney General and current 2nd District Republican Congressional nominee Derek Schmidt that was passed by a supermajority of Kansas Republican lawmakers in 2022 outlawed sanctuary jurisdictions in Kansas. Prior to that time Douglas and Wyandotte counties, Lawrence and Roland Park in Johnson County all had laws defying federal authority to investigate, detain and deport illegal aliens in those areas and to use immigration status as a qualifier for benefits and services.
Davids represents Johnson, Anderson, Miami and parts of Wyandotte counties.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
