Judge provides sanctuary for West Palm Beach’s resolution

Frank Cerabino

It’s interesting to contrast how two South Florida communities reacted to the threat of losing federal dollars over their handling of undocumented residents.

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that called for stripping federal funding to any so-called “sanctuary city,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez relented the next day.

Gimenez signed an order that called for the county jail to hold undocumented detainees beyond their release dates in order to turn them over to agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gimenez explained that his reason was strictly financial: He didn’t want to put at risk the $355 million the county receives from the federal government. And a month later, Gimenez’s decision was echoed by the Miami-Dade County Commission, which voted 9-3 to end the county’s “sanctuary” status.

Miami-Dade was an outlier among cities and counties, which for the most part, called the president’s executive order unconstitutional or counterproductive to public safety.

One of those cities was West Palm Beach, which reacted to the executive order by passing a resolution last month that declared the city a “Welcoming City” whose employees would not assist federal law enforcement officers in rounding up undocumented residents.

“We want to make sure people know that they are safe in West Palm Beach and this is a place where we want them to be,” West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio said about the resolution.

It prohibits city employees from investigating citizenship, disclosing information about someone’s immigration status, requiring federal identification documents instead of a Florida driver license, or using the city police department to act as federal enforcers.

The actions in Miami and West Palm Beach were both applauded and condemned. Which jurisdiction was right?

Well, that answer probably depends on your politics. But one thing became more clear this week. The threat of coercing counties and cities to do what Miami-Dade did is on shakier ground.

In its first legal test, the president’s executive order, which empowers the U.S. attorney