On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island urged city and town councils to adopt an ordinance to protect immigrant communities from what they called “constitutionally dubious federal actions and pronouncements.”
In a letter to the state’s 39 municipalities, the organization emphasized that “local officials have no obligation under federal law to participate in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
ACLU of RI’s executive director Steven Brown said the recommendations are designed to push back against several of President Trump’s recent executive orders.
“People may not realize it at first hand, but municipalities can play a really important role either in helping immigration officials or deterring them from doing things that impact and tear apart the community,” Brown said. “That’s really what this draft ordinance is all about, asking municipalities to adopt it and provide some protections to immigrants in their community from this xenophobic effort by the Trump administration to go after just about every immigrant in the country.”
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
