Help Wanted: More Jailers to Keep Criminal Aliens Off Streets

Foreign nationals charged with sexual battery, “lewd and lascivious molestation” and sexual misconduct with a minor were kept behind bars last month, thanks to alert local law-enforcement officers.

Exercising authority through 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) allows police agencies that have had special training from federal immigration enforcement officers to identify criminal aliens in their custody and hold them for up to 48 hours after their sentence ends with ICE detainers.

The
number of local law-enforcement agencies in the 287(g) program has increased
from 36 when President Donald Trump took office to 142 today. That’s the good
news.

But as FAIR noted earlier this year, it remains a paltry percentage of the 17,000 local jurisdictions across the country. With sanctuary cities swelling to more than 500, criminal aliens continue to slip through the cracks.

Jail doors have been wide open in the sanctuary state of California, especially in  Los Angeles County this year as the sheriff’s department there refused to honor more than 25,000 federal detainer requests for illegal aliens in its custody. Showing how such aliens are helped to evade removal from the U.S., ICE pointed to a Salvadoran national who was released into the community after he was found guilty of homicide, robbery and making terrorist threats.

Elsewhere, 287(g)-certified
officers kept some egregiously bad actors off the streets. ICE highlighted
three cases in which local jailers blocked releases last month:

• The
  Jacksonville (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office encountered a citizen of Trinidad and
  Tobago sentenced to 12 years in prison for capital sexual battery and lewd and
  lascivious molestation, and held him with an immigration detainer.

• The
  Lexington (S.C.) County Sheriff’s Office encountered a citizen of Guatemala
  charged with kidnapping and sex/criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 11
  years old, and detained him. The man had re-entered the U.S. after having been
  previously removed.

• The
  Montgomery County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office encountered a Mexican citizen
  charged with murder/homicide, and placed an immigration hold on him. The man
  entered the U.S. on an unknown date and location.

Detaining dangerous
individuals and working to keep them off the streets of America is a crucial
function that assists ICE. Imagine the good that could be accomplished if more
local law-enforcement agencies trained up and seriously committed to upholding
this country’s immigration laws as part of their peacekeeping duties.