Update: On Twitter on Friday afternoon, Trump indicated that the administration is still considering this proposal, despite reported concerns about the feasibility and expense of the idea.

A “sanctuary city” isn’t a place where immigrants living in the country illegally have carte blanche to do what they wish. Instead, they are generally jurisdictions where public officials are limited in their ability to inform immigration authorities about people who are in the country illegally. The intent is to encourage immigrants to work with authorities without fear of deportation in situations where that assistance is important, such as criminal investigations.

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Some jurisdictions passed laws or regulations to establish those sorts of protections because they already had large populations of immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants. Some places, with smaller immigrant populations, passed such laws in part to show solidarity with undocumented immigrants.

Consider San Francisco, which the administration apparently considered targeting under this proposal. More than a third of the city’s residents are immigrants, many of them from Asia. That’s a substantially higher percentage than the country on the whole, according to the Census Bureau. San Francisco is slightly less heavily Hispanic than the United States overall, which is not uncommon for sanctuary cities.

Looking at 34 sanctuary cities identified by the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, nearly two-thirds had a higher density of immigrants than the United States on the whole, by an average of six percentage points. While just under half the cities had a more densely Hispanic population than the country on the whole, cities with higher Hispanic density were often much higher. The 34 cities were, on average, six points more densely Hispanic than the country on the whole.

Sanctuary cities in California in particular were more heavily immigrant than the United States on the whole, though, again, many of those immigrants are Asian. More new immigrants in the United States are Asian than Hispanic.

The San Francisco metro region — incorporating Oakland and Hayward — is home to an estimated 240,000 undocumented immigrants, according to Pew Research Center data. Across the sanctuary city jurisdictions identified above, there are already an estimated 3.5 million undocumented immigrants.

It’s worth noting that many, or perhaps most, of those apprehended at the border with Mexico in recent months have arrived seeking asylum in the United States, a legal process that is distinct from illegal immigration. And it’s worth noting, yet again, that immigrants, including immigrants in the country illegally, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.

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