Senator Lindsey Graham’s End Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026 would impose up to five years in prison on state and local officials who willfully obstruct federal immigration enforcement.

The predictable reaction from sanctuary city defenders has been outrage. But the real outrage is that we need this law at all.

More than two hundred cities and twelve states have adopted sanctuary policies. To be clear, these are official declarations that they will not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Think about what that means.

Elected officials, people who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, have decided they get to pick which federal laws apply in their jurisdiction. That’s not brave local resistance. That’s lawlessness.

Article VI of the Constitution is clear. Immigration enforcement and border security are federal powers. Period. The Supreme Court has affirmed this repeatedly. Local officials don’t get to override Congress any more than a county clerk gets to rewrite the federal tax code.

Graham’s bill, S. 3805, doesn’t ask local officials to become immigration agents. It simply says they cannot actively obstruct the ones we already have. They cannot refuse to share information with ICE. They cannot release criminal illegal immigrants without notifying federal authorities. And if they do, and someone gets hurt, there are consequences.

We already know what those consequences look like when the law is ignored. In February, Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone with more than thirty prior arrests, allegedly stabbed Stephanie Minter to death at a Virginia bus stop. ICE had lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020. A judge had issued a final order of removal. Fairfax County authorities let him walk anyway. Stephanie Minter, a 41-year-old mother, is dead because local officials decided cooperation with federal law enforcement was optional.

Here’s what should alarm you: while Congress debates whether to hold sanctuary city officials accountable, some law enforcement leaders never needed a law to do the right thing. This month alone, ACRU presented Defender Awards to ten sheriffs and police chiefs across Arizona and Georgia, leaders in Cochise, Yuma, Pinal, and Navajo counties, in Bibb, Glynn, Tift, Lanier, and Grady counties, and in Social Circle. Every one of them cooperates with ICE. Every one of them honors their oath. They don’t need the threat of prison to follow the law. They just follow it. It’s their job. They chose to take the oath seriously.

Congress should pass the End Sanctuary Cities Act. But the sheriffs ACRU honored this month remind us of something more fundamental. The Constitution isn’t a menu. You don’t get to skip the parts you find inconvenient.