[McLynnan]

Austin is currently an officially designated sanctuary city.

Can anybody explain this? Austin is definitely the liberal capital of Texas, but this is over the top even for Austin.

[RoseyT]

I had no idea either. I did a quick search for Austin + sanctuary + immigrants and was shocked at the results. Other "sanctuary" cities include Houston, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Long Beach, Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles and New York.
Basically, they have their own little policy whereby police don't ask suspects their immigration status and they avoid involving federal immigration officials.
Unfreakingbelievable.

[Tarantulas]

Found this by using Google:

There are more than a dozen so called 'sanctuary cities' across the United States, from Portland Oregon to Chicago to Houston. The Sanctuary City policy generally forbids local law enforcement officers from checking on, or reporting, a person's immigration status. Austin passed its sanctuary city law in 1997. Supporters say it fosters 'trust' between officials and immigrants, and say they're afraid that without such protections, illegals would be unwilling to report crimes and would become easy prey for criminals.

But Burns says Sanctuary City laws violate federal statute.

"Cities, counties, local governments are forbidden from prohibiting, or in any way restricting, their employees from communicating with federal immigration authorities," Burns said. "The city of Austin's policies are clearly in violation of that."

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=FD9ED2B5-E303-4116-B4EB-149964550259

Looks like we need a series of citizen revolts.