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BO ‘Playing Russian Roulette’ with Americans -Senator Warns of New Policy to Free More Criminal Illegals
Kate Steinle
Garth Kant / WND
WASHINGTON – On the heels of the murder of a beautiful, young San Franciscan woman by an illegal immigrant with 7 felony convictions that shocked the nation, Republican senators are warning a new policy from the Obama administration would make Americans even less safe by releasing even more dangerous foreigners from custody.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said the administration’s proposed new ‘Priority Enforcement Program,’ or PEP, goes even further than Obama’s amnesty order in defining categories of illegal aliens from immigration enforcement, and actually directs officers not to enforce federal law.
“Immigration enforcement is not supposed to be a game of Russian roulette where we release habitual immigration violators into U.S. communities and hope and pray they don’t go on to commit additional criminal offenses,” he said in a statement.
Sessions charged, “By defining its ‘priorities’ to exclude large categories of illegal immigrants, including those who have already been ordered deported or those who illegally reenter after having been deported, PEP ensures that countless more dangerous aliens will be released into U.S. communities—allowing otherwise entirely preventable crimes, including some of the most violent and egregious, to occur.”
The senator noted,” Right now, there are nearly 170,000 convicted criminal aliens who have been ordered deported, but who remain at large in our country. This is a direct result of non-enforcement policies.”
Sessions also sent a letter to the administration saying PEP “requires immigration law officers and agents to ignore plain law and public safety”, signed by Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Charles Grassley, John Cornyn, David Vitter, David Perdue, Thom Tillis and Orrin Hatch.
The administration has ordered ICE to release 66,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records over the last two years.
Of the 36,007 criminal immigrants released by the Obama administration in 2013:
- 193 were convicted of homicide
- 426 were convicted of sexual assault
- 303 were convicted of kidnapping
- 1,075 were convicted of aggravated assault.
The Center for Immigration Studies obtained a March 2, 2015 “ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Weekly Departures and Detention Report” that showed there were 168,680 convicted criminal immigrants who had been ordered removed from the country but who are on the streets.
“Rather than working with state and local law enforcement to identify, detain, and deport dangerous criminal aliens, DHS officials have enabled ‘sanctuary cities’; dismantled effective cooperative-enforcement programs like 287g, Secure Communities, and Operation Streamline; and allowed repeat criminal offenders to be released onto American streets by the tens of thousands,” said Sessions.
As WND reported, the Obama administration’s refusal to let the nation’s top deportation official crack down on “sanctuary cities”apparently contributed to the murder of 32-year-old Kathy Steinle.
Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez
- On July 1, illegal immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez shot to death Steinle on a pier in San Francisco.
- Lopez-Sanchez had seven felony convictions and had been deported five times.
- It would have been six, but San Francisco authorities released him from custody under the city’s sanctuary city policy.
- ICE had Lopez-Sanchez in custody after his release from federal prison but turned him over to San Francisco authorities who wanted him on a drug warrant.
- ICE asked to be informed if he was released, but San Francisco doesn’t honor such requests under its sanctuary policy.
- CNN reported on Saturday that Freya Horne, chief legal counsel to the San Francisco County Sheriff, said “he was let go because there was no legal cause to detain the suspect” after the drug charges were dropped.
San Francisco did not comply with ICE’s request to detain Lopez-Sanchez because, Horne said, city officials believe that violates Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.”
In a jailhouse interview with San Francisco television station KGO, Lopez-Sanchez readily admitted to shooting Steinle.
When asked, “Did you keep coming back to San Francisco because you knew they wouldn’t actively look for you to deport you?” he simply replied, “Yes.”
Text of the senators’ letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson:
“Dear Secretary Johnson:
We write regarding the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which requires immigration law officers and agents to ignore plain law and public safety, solely to the benefit of criminal aliens in the United States. This program, along with the so-called “enforcement priorities” outlined in your November 20, 2014, memorandum titled “Priorities for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants,” are contrary to law and pose direct threats to public safety.
Your Department has refused to confront so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, endangering the public safety and leading to tragedies such as the recent killings of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco, California, and Angelica Martinez in Laredo, Texas. These deaths are the result of such sanctuary jurisdictions’ dangerous policies, and this Administration’s refusal to do anything to stop them. Yet, rather than enhance the successful Secure Communities program, confront sanctuary jurisdictions, defend federal law enforcement’s legitimate use of detainers, request additional resources, or ask Congress for a legislative solution, your Department has unilaterally designed a program that will endanger the American people.
As a preliminary matter, the “enforcement priorities” established in the aforementioned memorandum fail to include significant categories of criminal aliens defined by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), including, but not limited to:
· Aliens convicted of nearly all offenses that constitute crimes involving moral turpitude,[1] which includes not only crimes such as theft, but all offenses that are “inherently base, vile, or depraved, contrary to the accepted rules of morality and the duties owed between persons or society in general”[2]; and,
· Aliens convicted of drug possession offenses,[3] including those who were initially charged with trafficking offenses but who were permitted to plead down to simple possession.
Your enforcement priorities also fail to include other criminal aliens, such as those who have been convicted of two or more misdemeanors that you deem not to be “significant.” They similarly fail to include aliens convicted of any misdemeanor offense who do not serve 90 days or more in prison—regardless of whether they received a suspended sentence that exceeded 90 days. Rather than take the common sense approach of defining as “enforcement priorities” all classes of criminal and dangerous aliens as defined by Congress in the INA, and adding others as a matter of policy, your Department has elected to acquiesce willfully to the presence of criminal aliens in the United States and ordered law enforcement officers and agents to look the other way except in extremely limited circumstances.
Read more at WND:
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/obama-playing-russian-roulette-with-americans/
