U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continued its war against sanctuary cities last week on multiple fronts.
The agency hit Oregon with subpoenas, collared illegal-alien thugs at a California courthouse despite a state law that forbids such arrests, and then caught two illegal-alien criminals in Philadelphia, which ignored ICE detainers and set the criminals free.
Message to sanctuaries: Your unilateral subversion of federal immigration law will not stop agents from enforcing federal immigration law.
Oregon
One of the men for whom ICE sought information from Oregon’s Washington County Sheriff is a sex abuser. After a conviction in 2009 for possessing a forged document, ICE reported, the 39-year-old Mexican was convicted in 2014 of sex abuse in the first degree, which earned him six years, three months in the state lockup.
Last month, the prison sent him to the Washington County Jail, where he’s in custody now.
ICE filed the usual detainer. He faces “additional charges for displaying a child in sexual conduct, nine charges of sexual abuse in the first degree and four charges of sodomy in the first degree,” the agency reported.
The drunk was arrested in December. Hillsboro cops nailed the 44-year-old Mexican miscreant, ICE reported, for “driving under the influence of intoxicants, reckless driving, two probation violations for driving under the influence of intoxicants, failure to appear in the second degree for driving under the influence of intoxicants and failure to appear in the second degree for reckless driving.”
He was thrice arrested between 1999-2018 for DUI, but despite that and his latest conviction, the Washington County jail ignored a detainer and let him go. He is still at large.
Oregon is not the first and won’t be the last target for subpoenas. ICE has filed them in California, Connecticut, New York City, and Denver, Colorado.
California
In California, lefitst subversives in sanctuary Sonoma County are upset that ICE collared two illegals who were awaiting criminal trials in the county courthouse. The move supposedly trespasses a state law prohibiting such arrests.
State law does not supersede federal immigration law, as ICE made plain in speaking with Patch.com.
“Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, California Assembly Bill 668 cannot and will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly-enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States,” said David Jennings, director of the area’s ICE office. “Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities.”
One of the men is the typical illegal-alien drunk. He faces charges of DUI and domestic abuse charge, but he also has a DUI conviction from 2005, and was deported four times between 2004 and 2007.
The other has “five criminal convictions spanning more than a decade, including: misdemeanor trespassing, driving without a license, misdemeanor DUI/alcohol, illegal entry, and most recently, Feb. 28, 2019 conviction for misdemeanor battery,” an ICE spokesman told Patch.com. “In 2010, he was apprehended six times by U. S. Immigration officers. He voluntarily returned to Mexico three of those times and was ordered to be removed three subsequent times. He is in ICE custody pending removal.”
Philadelphia
Sanctuary Philadelphia is yet another city in rebellion against the federal government.
ICE bagged the most recent on February 18, the agency reported. He entered the United States in 2006 and also overstayed his visa. In 2014, he was convicted of possessing marijuana, and in 2018, of drunk driving.
Last month, cops arrested him again, this time for possession of narcotics, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession with intent to distribute, and possession of an instrument of crime.
On February 1, the city released him despite a detainer, which forced ICE to mount the usual manhunt.
On February 12, ICE agents collared the first, another visa violator who landed in the United States in 2009.
In March, 2018, ICE reported, cops arrested him for “possession with intent to distribute narcotics, possession of narcotics, carrying a firearm without a license, and carrying a firearm in the city.”
ICE lodged a detainer, but the city freed him a month later. In October that year, he was convicted and sentenced to serve a six-month sentence and three years probation.
Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
