Health Services/Policy
Quantifying the impact of state-level anti-sanctuary preemption policies on voting patterns, public program participation, and perinatal outcomes Caroline Kravitz* Caroline Kravitz Alina Schnake-Mahl Lita Lillibridge Kalee Fahndrich Alexandra Eastus Brent Langellier
Introduction: Local sanctuary laws limit cooperation with immigration agencies and decrease undocumented persons’ fear and risk of deportation. From 2009-2020, states passed anti-sanctuary laws which preempt, or supersede, local laws increasing the fear of immigrant communities. To date, no studies have analyzed the effect of this preemption on civic and health outcomes. Given the anti-immigration focus of the Trump administration, it is important to understand the impact of sanctuary preemption. Furthermore, few studies have developed methods to systematically search local codes to develop local policy exposure data. We hypothesize that preemption will lead to negative civic and health outcomes.
Methods: We used legal mapping to search media and legislative search engines and created a dataset of state anti-sanctuary laws enacted between 2009-2020 and local sanctuary laws enacted between 2000-2020. Previous immigration-themed legal epidemiology studies generally do not include local laws, so we developed a search protocol to identify municipal codes with a sanctuary law. We are merging our policy data with area-level outcomes, including immigration enforcement, voting rates, low weight births, and public program participation. Next, while controlling for policy and sociodemographic covariates, we will use a staggered difference-in-difference design to measure changes in outcomes in sanctuary localities that were preempted versus sanctuary localities that were not preempted.
Results: Between 2009-2020, we identified 19 state laws which preempt local sanctuary laws. Components of these laws we deemed particularly impactful include required compliance with federal detainer requests, required inquiries about immigration status during routine law enforcement activities, and protecting undocumented victims and witness. We further identified 25 local sanctuary laws enacted between 2000-2020. Results from our staggered difference-in-difference analysis are forthcoming.