Homan claims about sanctuary cities and jails

CBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez is here with me in Studio 57 with some new reporting. So Camilo, thank you for being here. Of course. I mean, for starters, are these statements from Homan inaccurate? Are Democrat-led cities and states allowing federal agents into jails? Well, Lindsey, it is true that there are some Democratic-led jurisdictions across the country that do not cooperate or work with federal immigration agencies like ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and also Customs and Border Protection. That often entails local rules that prohibit and bar officials in local, state county jails from honoring what are known as ICE detainers. These are requests by ICE for local officials in jails to hold on to non-citizen inmates before they are released, so ICE can come and pick them up and detain them pursuant to a deportation proceeding. We're talking about people who have been arrested, charged or convicted with local crimes, and are set to be released because the judge has ordered them to be released, or they have served their sentence for that alleged crime. That is the case in cities like New York City, states like California, and also counties like Hennepin County, which is home to Minneapolis, of course, now home to that massive deployment of federal immigration agents. And ICE has long argued on their Democratic and Republican administrations that that non-cooperation, rather, forces the agencies to go into communities, to go into the streets of many cities, to find and arrest the individuals who they could have picked up and arrested in local jails. And that because of that lack of cooperation and the fact that many sanctuary cities continue to adopt these policies, the agency has to go into communities to arrest individuals who are here illegally, but also have serious criminal records. What is the justification for not allowing these agents into these jails? And would access make a big difference? Well, the Democratic-led jurisdictions that have the so-called sanctuary policy say that they do not have the legal or constitutional authority to retain custody of non-citizens who have been ordered released by judges for the purposes of letting ICE come to their facilities to pick them up. More broadly, sanctuary jurisdictions also say that working with ICE and Border Patrol in the first place creates distrust within the immigrant communities that they serve, blurring the lines between local police departments and federal immigration agents, and scaring immigrants in their communities from reporting crimes. We should know that some of these sanctuary jurisdictions have exceptions for serious offenders. So they do transfer some serious criminals to federal immigration agents. And lastly, I should point out that critics of the administration would also say that this is not the only reason why ICE and Border Patrol is increasingly going into communities to arrest people in Home Depot parking lots or on the street. Because many of the people they are arresting are people who are undocumented here illegally, but don't have any criminal history and never were in a local jail to begin with. Camilo Montoya-Galvez, thank you.