So-called “Sanctuary Cities” have been drawing renewed attention across the country.

Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been sanctuary cities for nearly a decade.

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt was a member of the Town Council when the town adopted the policy.

“Back in 2007, a woman here in our community went to the police station in order to get a permit in order to sell her art,” he recalls. “When they put her name into the database, it revealed that her Student Visa had expired a long time prior to her pursuit of this permit.

“She was taken into custody and sent to Charlotte to be readied for deportation. That’s not the kind of policy that tends to advance our public safety goals and other important law enforcement goals.”

Kleinschmidt says that incident led the town to adopt a new policy.

“With a growing immigrant population,” he says, “we want to be a welcoming community, number one. But we also want to protect everyone who is living here in our community.

“We have very important law enforcement goals that demand that we protect the citizens, as well as any residents of Chapel Hill.”

Sanctuary Cities have been drawing attention after a woman in San Francisco was allegedly murdered by a seven-time felon who had been deported to Mexico five times, according to immigration officials.

Governor Pat McCrory issued a statement last week opposing sanctuary cities saying “there is no place for them in North Carolina.”

The governor ended his comments at the Annual Training Conference of the North Carolina Sheriff’s Association with, “We cannot allow any sanctuary for drug traffickers, human traffickers or violent criminals in our state.”

Kleinschmidt says, on this note, he is in complete agreement with McCrory.

“I think that every elected official and citizen of every community in this state,” he says, “agree that there is no tolerance for providing a safe haven for drug cartel members or violent criminals.

“And, in fact, the policies that we have in place express that lack of tolerance. None of us would support policies that would do such a thing.”

Kleinschmidt says by calling for the removal of sanctuary cities due to drug cartels, McCrory is missing the bigger picture.

“We have found that if we don’t report people to immigration when they have no history of violence [and] they have no history of being a deported criminal,” he says, “that it actually enhances our ability to create a safer community.”

Kleinschmidt adds if residents living in our town illegally are scared to go to law enforcement with concerns, then it will create more of an underground criminal presence.

Kleinschmidt says the situation in San Francisco highlights a breakdown in the federal immigration system and that this renewed focus on municipalities shifts the federal responsibility to local law enforcement.

“In that situation, you had someone who was actually being released from prison without having immigration informed,” he says. “And that’s not something that would happen here.

“And I don’t think it would happen there if you had people in place who were actually following the policy.”

Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue says immigration status can put strain on law enforcement.

“I think if you talked to most law enforcement leaders, at the local level,” he says, “they will express concern about the conflicted position that immigration issues can put law enforcement in.”

Blue says Chapel Hill police have adopted policies in an effort to protect all residents of the town.

“It doesn’t mean that, local law enforcement, we don’t want to be good partners,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is, often times, the kinds of things that we learn may have resulted in an immigration detainer on someone are administrative kinds of issues.

“Local law enforcement, I think it’s fair to say, is not interested in detaining someone and turning them over to immigration officials because of some administrative mix-up that could be managed without having to take someone into custody.”

Blue is quick to point out this policy does not provide a safe haven for violent criminals.

“If we encounter someone and there’s some kind of federal immigration detainer on them that’s resulted from some violent act or some felonious act on the part of that person,” he says, “of course we would detain them and share that information with federal authorities.”

Blue adds if a resident has overstayed a Visa or has another administrative fault calling for their deportation, law enforcement will alert that person of the situation but will not take them into custody.

“We want people in our community, at the local level, to feel comfortable and confident that when they call law enforcement to some emergency,” he says, “that when we get there and after we resolve the emergency we’re not going to start checking people’s immigration status.”

An e-mail from McCrory’s press office told WCHL the governor is just voicing his opposition to sanctuary cities at this time and McCrory was making no enforcement demands.

Meanwhile at the federal level, US House Republicans have passed a bill that would remove the opportunity for local law enforcement from sanctuary cities to receive federal grant funds.

The White House has threatened to veto the proposed legislation.