State investigation of Helena renews local control debate
Jordan Hansen
(Daily Montanan) A state investigation into a city of Helena resolution has renewed questions about the rights of municipalities, with the director of the League of Cities and Towns saying the state has made “constant and determined” efforts to undercut their power for six years.
Additionally, advocates who work with refugees in Helena have questions about the state investigation, which is looking into whether the city resolution violates a statewide ban on sanctuary cities.
In January, the Helena City Commission adopted a resolution to restrict federal law enforcement action in the city, which they said was simply restating policies the city has had in place for years.
But last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Attorney General Austin Knudsen said the measure could be illegal, and Helena could face steep penalties, as could other cities that follow suit.
The announcement the governor and attorney general were launching an investigation to determine whether the resolution runs contrary to state law raised concerns from advocates representing local jurisdictions and from those who work with refugees.
Those questions include some about how the immigrants they work with on a daily basis — mostly legal refugees — are being portrayed. Members of the public have questioned city councils and commissions around the state about their immigration policies, asking their local government to protect immigrants.
Passed in 2021 and signed by Gianforte, House Bill 200 banned sanctuary cities in Montana.
But Montana does not have sanctuary cities, a vague term used to describe certain laws passed by cities that dictate information sharing between cities and the federal government, said Montana League of Cities and Towns Executive Director Kelly Lynch. She said the League was opposed to HB 200 when it passed in 2021.
During a joint press conference announcing the investigation last week, Gianforte and Knudsen pointed to the city’s resolution as potentially violating that law.
Gianforte also gave a pointed warning to local governments across the state.
“In Montana, we don’t tolerate defiance,” Gianforte said.
In city halls in Montana, there appears to be some degree of resignation over what power cities have, Lynch said. She said gun laws are another example of a time where the state and cities have been at odds over local control.
“We are just being hammered by the state legislature,” Lynch said last week, adding, “They comply with the law.”
On the ground in Helena, advocates also expressed frustration with how immigrants have been portrayed by state leaders.
During the joint press conference, Gianforte brought up the “flow of fentanyl” into the country, which has been blamed by the White House on Mexico and Canada. Indeed, about 96% of the fentanyl intercepted by law enforcement coming to the United States comes from through the country’s southern border.
“We’ve seen crime in our local communities. We’ve seen gang members apprehended in our local communities. Local jurisdictions cannot protect these criminals,” Gianforte said. “They need to be working with federal agencies.”
But some advocates worry that the concern over illegal immigration is unfairly casting blame on all immigrants, and there is not much data to suggest that people who have come to America — documented or not — commit crimes at a higher rate than U.S. citizens born on American soil.
“They’re not causing any problems, and they’re not criminals,” Hellermann said of the people she works with.
According to a federal report, Texas is believed to be the only state requiring the “determination and documentation of immigration status” as part of standard criminal justice records practice.
And what Lone Star State officials found is that undocumented immigrants commit crimes (and violent crimes) at a significantly lower percentage than native-born citizens.
“Undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes,” a National Institute of Justice report reads.
Immigrants that Valerie Hellermann, executive director of the Helena Area Refugee Resettlement Team, sees on a daily basis do not fit the descriptions given by state leaders, she said. Many of the people she works with have laborious jobs at big box stores, she added.
“People in this community are embracing refugees coming in. I haven’t heard one person complain about refugees taking a job away from them,” Hellermann said, saying the families were “Doing the heavy lifting, kind of work that most of us don’t want to do.”
According to a report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, refugees and asylum seekers were a net benefit to the country’s economy, specifically taking a look at immigration from 2005 to 2019.
During that period, refugees and asylees had a positive net fiscal impact during that 15-year period, with that calculated to be about $123 billion. Between 1990 and 2022, the U.S. accepted 2.1 million refugees and more than 800,000 people were additionally granted asylum.
Refugees are people who have been screened oversees and are granted a legal status before they enter the United States. The average wait for a refugee to settle in the U.S. is about 17 years, according to the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services, one of 10 resettlement agencies in the U.S. that refugees are referred to.
Asylum seekers, meanwhile, have to present at a port of entry to the United States and go through a long process to be accepted. According to the American Immigration Council, about 100 million people worldwide were forced to flee their homes in 2022, with about 32.5 million of those people leaving because they faced persecution.
It’s difficult to enter the country, Hellermann said, with things like medical checks required for legal status, and those can only be performed by certain doctors.
“The people who are here, in the process, who have delayed filing the forms, it’s because they don’t have the finances to do it,” Hellermann said. “They’re just trying to survive, and they’re working people.”
Additionally, there’s a major misconception undocumented immigrants, who sometimes may be going through the process to be in the country legally, are getting social program benefits, she said.
“The only benefits that people are able to get as an undocumented person or as somebody in the process is maybe they can get a work permit while they’re in the process, but not always,” Hellermann said. “Sometimes that takes several years to get a work permit, so they’re having to work under the table.”
And, with cuts to food programs, things have become even more complicated.
“They’re kind of on their own,” Hellermann said. “It’s a rough road for these folks.”