When the press presents the objections of citizens to sanctuary cities, it certainly doesn’t use the strongest arguments.

Immigrant ’sanctuaries’ rouse opponents’ wrath, LA Times, July 25, 2010

Reporting from Washington – Critics of the Obama administration’s decision to sue Arizona over its new law to control illegal immigration accuse the government of overlooking a more obvious target: the dozens of cities that called themselves a ”sanctuary” for immigrants.

”Everyone has noticed the hypocrisy of the government going after Arizona and ignoring the sanctuary cities,” said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. ”They have it exactly backwards. Arizona is applying federal law, and sanctuary cities are violating it.”

Justice Department lawyers on Thursday asked a judge in Phoenix to block Arizona’s law from going into effect on the grounds it interferes with federal immigration policy. The law is due to take effect in the coming week.

The Justice Department lawyers say the government wants to catch and deport criminal immigrants, but it does not wish to take custody of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are otherwise abiding by the law.

Right, as if unlawfully occupying American jobs and using stolen Social Security numbers (a felony) makes the aliens ”otherwise abiding by the law.”

But worse than that is the threat to public safety when the most violent foreign criminals are treated like privileged characters, which is what happens in sanctuary cities.

Heather MacDonald explained how the policy is seriously hazardous to public safety by allowing known criminals to roam free:

The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave, City-Journal, Winter 2004

LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time–flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only committing a misdemeanor). ”But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can’t touch him,” laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him–but not for the immigration felony.

The most important argument against alien sanctuary is the increasing list of crime victims, including Los Angeles high school football star Jamiel Shaw (shown) who was killed by an illegal alien gangster one day after the criminal was released from jail without being deported.

In 2008, San Francisco father Tony Bologna and his two sons were murdered by an illegal alien gangster with a record of violence who was similarly allowed back on the street without being deported.

There are other cases of Americans being killed in preventable crimes – many by previously arrested drunk driving illegal aliens. Sadly, the MSM is incapable of connecting the dots of causality.

There is NO evidence that illegals speak up with evidence against criminals, which is the bogus reason given by many sanctuary supporters; the policy is promoted because the open-borders extremists do NOT care that the program helps violent criminals to stay and commit more crimes against innocent citizens. To them, open borders is an issue that supercedes the rule of law.