Last week, ICE
officers in California took to the streets for four days to round up 244
criminal aliens who had been at large in six southern California counties.
Billed by ICE as a “fugitive operation,” in fact the round-up was a sanctuary
mop-up action. If the number of sanctuary jurisdictions continues to grow
(there are now more than 310), and Congress does not take action, ICE
increasingly will be obliged to do its important work in this manner. And
that’s the way the Obama administration wants immigration enforcement to be:
inefficient, expensive, and frightening to immigrants. But it doesn’t have to
be this way.
Until recently,
the combination of universal fingerprint-sharing made possible through the
Secure Communities program and generally cooperative local agencies meant that
ICE officers had the ability (if not the mandate) to apprehend most every
illegal alien who was arrested by local authorities. “It was almost a perfect
system,” one ICE officer told me. “Almost no illegal aliens went through the
jails [in our area] without us knowing about them.” Upon learning that an
illegal alien had been booked into a local jail, ICE officers could issue a
detainer notifying the jail that they intended to initiate deportation, and the
locals would hold the alien in custody, as per federal regulations that are
still in effect (8 CFR 287.7)
Times have
changed. Now, says Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman in California, “One of the
challenges we’re facing is, because of state law and local policies, more individuals
who are potentially deportable with significant criminal histories are being
released onto the street instead of being turned over to ICE.”
From January
through August of 2014, nationwide, local sanctuaries released more than 8,000
criminal aliens that ICE was seeking to deport. More than 1,800 went on to
commit new crimes within that eight-month period. ICE has re-apprehended only
about 30 percent; the rest are still at large.
California
became the nation’s largest sanctuary jurisdiction on January 1, 2014, when it
adopted the so-called Trust Act. This curiously named legislation forbids local
law-enforcement agencies from holding criminal aliens in custody for ICE,
except in the case of certain serious offenders. It also allows local governments
to impose even more severe restrictions — as the city of San Francisco has
done, by prohibiting all forms of cooperation and communication with ICE.
A few cities
outside California and one other state have adopted some version of the Trust
Act. Share article on Facebook share Tweet article tweet Most California
sheriffs actively oppose the restrictions and cooperate to the fullest extent
they can within the confines of the Trust Act. Others just ignore ICE
communications. I am told that the Riverside County Sheriff’s office goes so
far as to stamp “Rejected” on ICE notifications and faxes them back to ICE.
The Los Angeles
Times profiled 32-year-old Hugo Medina, one of the illegal aliens the Riverside
sheriff released, whom ICE had to locate and re-arrest. Medina had a lengthy
rap sheet of convictions for several instances of drunk, unlicensed, uninsured
driving; disorderly conduct; possession of controlled substances; theft, prior
deportation; failure to appear in court; and more. He referred to these as
“errors in judgment,” and vowed to return, if re-deported, to his wife and
American-born children who were “traumatized” by ICE’s action.
The 244
criminal aliens that ICE was able to track down in last week’s operation are a
drop in the bucket of sanctuary-related releases. Last year, there were more
than 5,000 criminal aliens released by California jails, making up more than
half the nationwide total of sanctuary releases. I am told that nowadays nearly
all of the cases pursued by ICE street teams in southern California are
criminals released by local jails despite receiving a detainer notice from ICE.
Congress must
not allow the irresponsible policies of sanctuary jurisdictions to bog down
ICE. Not only does this situation put the public at risk from at-large
criminals who should be deported, it is very expensive. I am told that one ICE
officer can place 10 to 15 detainers in a day, with a couple of officers needed
to take them into custody. But locating and arresting just one released
criminal alien requires a lot more: one case officer to do the research and
paperwork, at least two officers and a government vehicle to conduct five to
eight hours or more of surveillance to home in on the subject, a trip back to
the office to get the supervisor’s signature, another trip to the offender’s
address to stake out and wait for him to leave his house, and potentially a
public confrontation and chase that ensues upon contact. Multiply this by
hundreds of targets, and it becomes a major commitment of resources to
re-arrest just a fraction of the criminal aliens who are now on the loose. I
asked ICE whether it had calculated the cost of the four-day, six-county
California operation, and was told it had not. But it is not hard to see that
this is less efficient than processing criminal aliens before they are
released, not to mention more dangerous. If you were an ICE officer, where
would you rather arrest a gang member or cartel operative — in the jail, or at
his house?
There is a
better way. Congress must not allow the irresponsible policies of sanctuary
jurisdictions to bog down ICE any more than it is already hampered by the Obama
administration’s relentless undercutting. It needs to clarify in law that local
agencies may not obstruct ICE’s legitimate enforcement actions and sanction
those that do. Further, since more than 90 percent of the nation’s sheriffs and
police chiefs do still cooperate with ICE without issue, lawmakers should give
them qualified immunity from the endless predatory lawsuits instigated by advocates
for illegal aliens. And, Congress could thwart the Obama administration’s
sandbagging of enforcement and rein in costs by requiring ICE to use more
efficient forms of due process to remove criminal aliens.
No one should
be satisfied with H.R. 3009, the weak bill rushed through by House leadership
earlier this summer, when all this and more is covered in the Davis-Oliver Act,
named for two California deputies killed by an illegal-alien cartel operative
last year. — Jessica Vaughan is director of policy studies at the Center for
Immigration Studies.
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