The top deportation official for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency told Congress that as many as 100 illegal alien criminals are released back on the streets in Los Angeles every day due to California’s sanctuary city policies.
Timothy S. Robbins, acting associate executive director of detention and removal operations at ICE, told the lawmakers that his agency used to get 75-100 illegal alien criminals turned over to ICE every day. Now, they get less than 5.
The irony, he said, is that sanctuary communities say they want ICE to focus on deporting criminals — but by refusing to cooperate at their jails they’re actually pushing the agency’s 6,800 deportation officers out into communities, meaning they are more likely to pick up rank-and-file illegal immigrants while arresting fewer criminals.
It also means ICE needs more money and more agents to staff deportation teams that go out into the communities, rather than the one or two officers needed to take custody of people in a jail.
“There’s a true cost,” Mr. Robbins said. “ICE enforcement will no longer be in the jails. It’ll be in the communities — the same communities these sanctuary policies are trying to keep ICE out of. … I will have to send officers out onto the street, which is less safe for officers, the community and the subject at large.”
Former ICE official and Fox News contributor Tom Homan sums up the real-world effect of these policies:
“This sheriff in L.A. County: he’s on the outside looking in. So, he’s even walked away from his own organization on this,” Homan said.
While some argue that sanctuary policies are “protecting” the immigrant community, Homan said that criminal illegal immigrants are a threat to those communities.
“This sheriff is taking a political stance. He forgot the oath he’s taken. He stopped being a cop, [he] became a politician, because he’s not protecting these communities as much as he could,” he told Kilmeade.
But the LA police only release non-violent offenders right? Robbins appeared to shock Democrats when he told them that simply wasn’t so.
“Are you saying that local law enforcement, if they knew they had a violent offender in custody, that they would release those persons?” asked Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Mr. Robbins said. “I have many examples.”
Ms. Hirono was taken aback and repeated her question — twice — in disbelief.
“So your testimony is that the local law enforcement releases violent offenders?”
“That’s what we’re talking about today,” Mr. Robbins told her.
Sanctuary policies have become a political issue, and not a public safety issue. The consequences of that are mind-boggling. We move mountains to protect our children from predators — except if they’re an illegal alien. Then, politics demand that we release the potential child rapist back onto the streets where he can prey on someone’s kid.
It won’t be a politician’s kid, that much is certain. The politicians can still strike a pose and emote ad infinitum, bragging about their “compassion” for illegal aliens and how they stuck it to those meanies in ICE. Meanwhile, the predator rapes someone else’s kid.
I’d like to say that supporters of sanctuary policies just don’t think things through, that they are sacrificing public safety on the altar of political expediency because they just don’t know any better.
Instead, they know full well there will be consequences to what they are advocating and are willing to risk the occasional tragedy to achieve a political goal.
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