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Cities receive guidance on sanctuary immigration policies

(AP & WXXI News) The state's attorney general on Thursday issued guidance to local governments on how they can put laws and policies in place to limit their participation in federal immigration enforcement activities under Republican President-elect Donald Trump's administration. 

The guidance from Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says local law enforcement agencies can take several steps. Those steps include refusing to enforce non-judicial civil immigration warrants, denying requests from federal officials to hold onto people in custody who haven't been charged for more than 48 hours, limiting immigration enforcement agents' access to people already in custody and limiting the gathering and reporting of information like someone's immigration status. 

Schneiderman said public safety depends on trust between law enforcement and communities. 

``No local law enforcement agency should have to undercut that trust just to carry out Donald Trump's draconian immigration policies,'' he said. 

Trump made clamping down on immigration a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, including building a wall on the country's border with Mexico, deporting more of those people in the United States without legal authorization and prohibiting entry to immigrants from certain nations. 

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren issued a statement saying that in 1986, City Council passed a resolution declaring Rochester a “City of Sanctuaries,” and she plans to ask the current Council to bring the resolution up to date and reflect some of Schneiderman’s recommendations. Warren says as an African American woman and the child of an immigrant, she is keenly aware of what discrimination feels like and says it has no place in the ‘American Dream.’

The Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately comment.

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