Additionally, it also imposes this prohibition even when those buildings are the property not of state or local government but of private parties. It imposes this prohibition even when those buildings are otherwise open to the public. Like SB 183 in California, it purports to forbid personnel of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol ( CBP) from entering schools, hospitals, places of worship and courthouses without a judicial warrant. The bill goes far beyond the scope of most sanctuary legislation. 2017’s House Bill 6021 became 2018’s House Bill 7537, but otherwise they’re identical as the euphemistically-named “Rhode Island Values Act.”

This situation is apparently no longer enough for the Ocean State’s open-borders lobby, who two years in a row now have managed to get their allies in the state legislature to introduce one of the most extreme sanctuary bills not just anywhere in the country, but in history. In Rhode Island this has an outsized impact compared to most states since there are no county jails: RIDOC houses everyone who gets arrested, whether “awaiting trial sentenced.” But this sanctuary policy is still only an executive directive, not legislation, so while current Governor Gina Raimondo has left it in place, a future governor could unilaterally change or eliminate it.

Rhode Island has been a sanctuary state since 2014, when then-Governor Lincoln Chaffee directed the state’s executive-branch agencies, and in particular its Department of Corrections ( RIDOC), to stop honoring federal immigration detainers unless accompanied by a court order.

Ridoc careers