On Monday, the Pima County Recorder certified that enough signatures submitted for the Tucson sanctuary city initiative were valid to qualify it for the ballot. The initiative now goes to the city council. If the mayor and city council do not approve it, the initiative goes onto the November 2019 ballot. If the mayor and city council approve the measure, it will become law without an election.
The initiative would include in city code a declaration of the city’s sanctuary status and add a new section that includes provisions:
- restricting law enforcement officers from actions to determine a person’s immigration status under certain conditions;
- prohibiting officers from contacting federal law enforcement agencies to determine a person’s immigration status; and
- prohibiting city employees from inquiring about a person’s immigration status, among other policies.
The group Tucson Families Free and Together submitted about 18,000 signatures on July 3, 2019. They needed to collect 9,241 valid signatures by July 5, 2019, to qualify the initiative for the November general election ballot. Through a random sampling of 871 signatures, the Pima County Recorder found that a projected 71.8% of the submitted signatures were valid. Unless there is a successful legal challenge, this means enough of the submitted signatures were valid to qualify the initiative for the ballot.
The Pima County Republican Party announced it would assist in a legal challenge against the sufficiency of the initiative petition based on the number of valid signatures required and the percentage of submitted signatures counted as valid.