‘We have to pick: Federal law or state law’…
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The new chief of Border Patrol said his agency will not turn over illegal aliens accused of crimes if local law enforcement agencies can’t guarantee the illegals will be returned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
This move is the federal government’s latest attempt to crack down on sanctuary cities and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officers.
“My job is to protect the United States and to secure the borders, not to get prosecutions, so we are deporting people that have active warrants because the state will not give back that person to us, and we have to pick: federal law or state law,” Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said, according to the Washington Examiner.
It doesn’t matter what kind of crime the illegal alien has been charged with if the local jurisdiction is going to just release the immigrant back into the public, Scott explained.
“If they will not give confirmation that they are going to return the individual, then we are not going to turn them over,” Scott said. “We’ll prosecute them federally, then deport them.”
Sanctuary policies put citizens’ lives at risk, said acting ICE Director Matthew Albence, who cited an inspector general’s report that there are more than 17,000 removable illegal aliens still at large because of sanctuary policies across the country.
“This report further confirms what we have said for years: our communities are safer when law enforcement works together to take criminal aliens off the streets,” Albence said. “Worst of all, while we’re still out looking for these criminals, many of these criminals commit further crimes, further victimizing the very communities these uncooperative jurisdictions are purporting to protect.”