Takoma Park ‘sanctuary city’ ordinance discussed Monday in closed session

City attorney Susan Silber briefed council members on the complexities that come with following the 1985 ordinance in the closed session.

The city’s sanctuary city ordinance states that ‘‘no agent, officer or employee of the city, in the performance of official duties” can assist in the investigation or arrest ‘‘of any persons for civil or criminal violation of the immigration and nationality laws of the United States.” Furthermore, information regarding the citizenship or residency status of any Takoma Park resident is not to be released to federal immigration authorities. The law, part of city code, did not come up for review during routine recodification in December 2004, according to city records.

Silber said there would be further public discussion following the closed session, ‘‘as there should be.”

‘‘We believe it is going to be a huge mistake, a huge mistake, if they even think about making changes in this legislation,” said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group that operates day laborer centers in Montgomery County, including Takoma Park and Silver Spring. ‘‘If there becomes public debate about this, not only Casa [of Maryland] will absolutely get involved, but we are going to bring a huge coalition of progressive organizations into the city of Takoma Park that is going to send a very clear message that we need this sanctuary city.”

While Mayor Kathy Porter said the ordinance is legally sound, residents should expect further public discussions.

City Manager Barbara Burns Matthews said the memo reviewing the ordinance prepared for the council by Silber would be released to the community this week.

‘‘I think that what the City Council was hoping for was some clarification, and that’s happened administratively,” Councilwoman Joy Austin-Lane (Ward 1) said Tuesday.

Austin-Lane brought her concerns about the city’s sanctuary city law after reading about the January incident in the Washington Post last month, in which Takoma Park resident Hugo Hernandez was pulled over for running a red light in the city.

A routine check of outstanding warrants in the FBI-run National Crime Information Center database revealed an immigration warrant for a missed deportation hearing six years earlier. Hernandez was taken to a county detention center, and eventually put into the custody of immigration officials. He was then deported to his native Guatemala.

Civil detainers have been included in the database since 2002. County policy has been to report to federal immigration officials when warrants, administrative orders not issued by judges, come up in the database.

Before the closed session, council members were questioning whether their sanctuary city policies should have prevented Hernandez’s deportation.

‘‘The legal advice we received was that the statute is unchanged by any recent events,” Councilman Terry Seamens (Ward 4) said. ‘‘There was the indication in the session that the police department would like to see changes to it.”

Austin-Lane said Police Chief Ronald Ricucci would be ‘‘putting out orders to his staff, so that everyone is uniformly applying the policy set years ago.”

Seamens said the council learned during the closed session that the police department never had anything written in its general orders regarding the city’s sanctuary city ordinance. Matthews would not comment on whether the January incident came up in the closed session.

‘‘The staff may have some suggestions in terms of some possible modifications, but those will be presented to the council,” she said.

Ricucci said it would be premature to discuss the issue before a public dialogue. In response to whether the police department had any opinion on the current code, he said, ‘‘The code speaks for itself.”

It is unclear how many illegal immigrants reside in Takoma Park, Seamens said. According to city data, of the nearly 5,000 foreign-born legal residents in Takoma Park, about 13 percent hail from Latin American countries, and about 8 percent are from African countries. In proportion with the rest of the state, the city has nearly three times the number of foreign-born residents, according to U.S. census data from 2000.

The 1985 sanctuary city ordinance, introduced by then-Councilman Lou D’Ovidio, was originally passed to address the large number of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees fleeing Central America at the time. An accompanying resolution stated that about 20,000 Salvadorans and Guatemalans sought refuge in the city and its surrounding communities.

Before the closed session, Porter said she had no plans to propose changes to the ordinance and has not heard similar plans from other council members.

More than 30 other cities have similar sanctuary city ordinances, and immigration advocates in Washington, D.C., are pressing for a formal ‘‘sanctuary city” declaration by the city’s officials, said Sonia Umanzor, a member of the Metro D.C. Interfaith Sanctuary Network. Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier reaffirmed the city’s police department’s current policy on immigration laws in April. ‘‘The [Metropolitan Police Department] is not in the business of inquiring about the residency status of the people we serve and is not in the business of enforcing civil immigration laws,” the policy states.

Elsewhere, local officials are taking opposite measures. In Virginia’s Prince William County last week, officials voted unanimously to approve a resolution that allows officers to check the status of anyone suspected to be an illegal immigrant in police custody.