• Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, also a Republican candidate for governor, suggests potential legal and financial repercussions for cities obstructing immigration enforcement.
• Cincinnati officials maintain that the city complies with state and federal laws while expressing commitment to supporting immigrants.

Ohio governor candidate and Cincinnati-area native Vivek Ramaswamy said Cincinnati should ditch its status as a sanctuary city.

Cincinnati declared itself a “sanctuary city” in February 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term. The 6-2 vote by Cincinnati City Council was largely symbolic because city police didn’t enforce federal immigration laws anyway.

In the years since, Cincinnati hasn’t passed any rules or taken any action to block U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting immigrants here illegally. But Trump’s administration plans to crack down on “sanctuary jurisdictions,” threatening their federal funding or launching investigations into local leaders.

The Enquirer polled Cincinnati City Council members last month, and they said they did not support revoking the city’s sanctuary status. Mayor Aftab Pureval has said the city will follow state and federal laws as needed.

Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated from India legally, said Cincinnati’s leaders are advocating for violating the rule of law with their sanctuary city designation.

“Either the city leadership applied the label of sanctuary city to virtue signal, which is for their own private benefit and it’s hollow and it doesn’t mean anything,” Ramaswamy told the statehouse bureau. “Or it does mean something, in which case it means the wrong thing. We absolutely should not have our cities facilitating the abandonment of the rule of law in America.”

Ramaswamy and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost are the top Republicans vying to replace Gov. Mike DeWine, who cannot run again in 2026 because of term limits. Yost said the term sanctuary city is “radioactive” because it’s aligned with open borders and interfering with federal immigration law.

“If that’s what you’re doing, then I think you’re going to be looking at some significant legal and financial problems,” Yost said.

Yost said Cincinnati leaders might be off the hook if their goal is more altruistic than obstructive. “If we’re talking about the Christian virtue of caring for the widow, the orphan and the immigrant, that’s a different kind of thing than obstructing enforcement of the law.”

However, Ramaswamy said most legal immigrants would find Cincinnati’s designation offensive.

“I say this as the kid of legal immigrants: Your first act of entering this country cannot break the law,” Ramaswamy said. “And I think it is shameful when governments, including local governments, are advocating for and even sponsoring and incentivizing the violation of the rule of law.”

Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Sharon Coolidge contributed reporting.

Jessie Balmert covers state government and politics for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.