Violent crime soared in two North Carolina counties after their sheriffs decided to stop cooperating with federal immigration officials, according to a Immigration Reform Law Institute investigation.
Mecklenburg County and Wake County both cancelled their 287(g) agreements that allowed local law enforcement to transfer criminal illegal aliens into federal custody for processing, prosecution, and deportation.
As a result, the number of criminal illegal aliens has increased in these two counties.
Both Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden and Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker ran on the promise of ending their cooperation agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
After coming into office in 2018, they stayed true to their promises.
Mecklenburg County saw more violent crime of every type from 2018 to 2019, including murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, according to data from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.
Wake County experienced an overall rise in violent crime.
When Baker ended Wake County’s 287(g) agreement, transfers of illegal aliens to ICE dropped from 1,556 in 2018 to just two in 2019.
“If the goal is to make communities safer, cancelling 287(g) agreements is one of the worst things elected leaders can do,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI.
“The reduction in custody transfers allows these aliens to re-enter the community and the opportunity to commit additional crimes,” Wilcox said. “Anti-borders sheriffs who are campaigning against 287(g) need to be held accountable by their constituents for this reckless abandonment of their core responsibilities.”
Congressional Democrats want to bring more violent crime to communities throughout the nation by defunding the 287(g) program, which would undermine local cooperation with ICE.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. introduced legislation to repeal the program, and more than two dozen far-left Democratic representatives have joined her effort to undermine immigration enforcement nationwide, Roll Call reported.
Torres argued, contrary to the evidence, that Americans will be less safe if local law enforcement agents arrest criminal illegal aliens and transfer them to federal custody.
She said this practice deteriorates trust between illegal aliens—who are criminals by definition—and police officers.
“A degradation in community trust permits more crime to occur and endangers law enforcement officials,” the representatives wrote in a letter to the Democratic leadership of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
They said the program should be “zeroed out” in the 2022 spending bill.
The 287(g) program provides federal funds to local law enforcement agencies so that they can train and dispatch officers to handle some aspects of immigration enforcement, such as checking someone’s citizenship status in the Department of Homeland Security database.
“A critical mission of law enforcement officers is to safeguard their communities, and these sheriffs are failing in that mission when they abandon 287(g) agreements,” said Tom Homan, IRLI senior fellow and former acting director of ICE.
“It is very fashionable today for elected officials to pander to immigrant groups by supporting sanctuary laws and opposing 287(g) agreements, but those actions clearly result in more violent crime and innocent people being killed,” he said. “It’s a national tragedy and cannot continue.”
