This election season, WESA and PublicSource are analyzing the political advertising you’re seeing on air and online. Look for Spot Check weekly.
The spot
The 30-second ad titled “Radical Policies” rehashes events that played out in Philadelphia in the late 2010s during the height of the debate about the city’s “Sanctuary City” policy.
The ad, funded by a conservative super PAC, claims that Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is responsible for the city’s policies regarding detention of immigrants, and that those policies allowed a child to be raped several years ago.
Casey is running for reelection against Republican Dave McCormick.
When did it launch?
Sept. 24.
How many airings?
At least 1,848, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. More than 340 of those were in the Pittsburgh market.
Who’s paying?
The ad was placed by Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee aligned with Republican leaders in the Senate. A September investigation by PublicSource and WESA found that about 90% of the group’s funds this election cycle have come from donations of $500,000 or more. Its biggest donors as of mid-summer were billionaire conservatives Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, as well as conservative “dark money” group One Nation.
How much?
More than $3.8 million, according to an AdImpact estimate.
The claims
The ad begins by recounting a criminal case that became a flashpoint in Philadelphia’s debate about immigration and law enforcement in the late 2010s.
An “illegal immigrant,” the narrator says, was arrested for domestic assault, and “instead of deporting him, Philadelphia let him go, because of the sanctuary city policy Bob Casey voted for.”
The ad asserts that “Casey’s radical policy released the criminal,” and then the person in question raped a 5-year-old girl — a crime the ad says was preventable and was caused by “sanctuary city policies that are backed by Bob Casey.”
The facts
Philadelphia’s sanctuary city policy amounts to a refusal to honor detainers issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. Detainers are requests to local law enforcement to detain people until longer than normal so ICE can take custody and potentially deport them.
In Philadelphia, former Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, went to court to defend the city’s policy of not turning immigrants over to ICE without a warrant signed by a judge. ICE detainers are not approved by judges, unlike arrest warrants.
That came into play when Juan Ramon Vasquez, the subject of the ad, was in a Philadelphia jail after a domestic assault arrest in 2014. ICE issued a detainer for him, the city did not honor the request, and a city official said later that it would have cooperated if ICE obtained an arrest warrant for Vasquez. “If they had done so, the individual would have been released into their custody,” a city spokesperson said to WHYY in a 2019 statement.
Instead, after the charges against Vasquez were dropped, he went on to repeatedly sexually assault his girlfriend’s daughter in 2016 and was sentenced to between eight and 20 years in prison for the crimes.
The ad echoes a statement made by former U.S. Attorney William McSwain in 2019.
“If the ICE detainer had been honored by local law enforcement, this crime never would have happened, and the victim would have been spared horrendous physical and mental trauma,” said McSwain, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.
While the ad’s telling of Vasquez’s path through Philadelphia’s prison and in and out of the country matches news accounts, the story’s connection to Casey is not clear.
The ad includes citations for a number of its claims, but it does not provide one for the claim that Casey “voted for” a sanctuary city policy or that he “backed” a policy.
Neither Senate Leadership Fund nor the campaign of Dave McCormick, Casey’s Republican challenger, responded to requests for comment for this story.
A page on McCormick’s campaign website points out that Casey voted against measures that would have denied federal funding from cities with sanctuary policies.
Maddy McDaniel, spokesperson for Casey’s campaign, said in a statement that Casey opposes sanctuary cities.
She said he “believes all jurisdictions must cooperate with ICE and law enforcement at all levels.”
After one of the votes noted on McCormick’s site, on a 2016 bill that failed to advance in the Senate, Casey said in a news release that the measure would have cut funding for police officers and domestic violence victims.
“There’s no doubt that our cities will be less safe if these pieces of legislation ever became law,” Casey said. He also urged the city to negotiate with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to “strengthen their relationship” around immigrant detention.
A 2018 Politifact fact check found Republicans did not provide evidence for claims that Casey supported or voted for sanctuary city policies.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
PublicSource’s access to AdImpact data on political advertising is made possible through a partnership with WESA and support from The Heinz Endowments.
