Stepping up a public relations campaign against “sanctuary” polices, federal immigration authorities on Friday highlighted more than 40 crimes committed by prisoners released by New York City officials in less than four months.
The report comes from a three-month review of hold requests issued by the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
From January to mid-April, ICE issued 440 so-called detainers to the New York Police Department and the city’s corrections agency. The 40 subsequent crimes represent about 9 percent of those released suspects — in just three and a half months.
Scott Mechowski, acting field office director for the ERO in New York, criticized local officials.
“In just three months, more than three dozen criminal aliens were released from local custody. Simply put, the politics and rhetoric in this city are putting its own communities at an unnecessary risk,” he said in a statement.
“ICE has no choice but to continue to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at work sites, wasting valuable resources on criminal aliens who could be securely turned over to ICE custody at jails and prisons,” he said.
Among those who re-offended are:
- A 43-year-old man from China who was released in March after being arrested for drug possession. Police arrested him again on felony drug possession charges in April.
- A 28-year-old man from Azerbaijan who was released in February on a June warrant charging him with third-degree criminal trespassing. Police arrested him again in April on charges of fourth-degree larceny and credit card fraud. His criminal record includes convictions for third-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.
- A 20-year-old from Guatemala arrested on a felony count of second-degree assault in an incident that injured a victim older than 65. After his January release, police arrested the suspect again the following month on a felony charge of grand larceny, and again in March on a resisting-arrest charge.
- A 28-year-old Salvadoran man charged with assault in March, released and arrested again on a robbery charge in April.
- A 29-year-old man from Burkina Faso who was released in January after police charged him with criminal contempt. Authorities arrested him again in April on a different contempt charge.
In addition to those who arrested after their release, New York also released a 28-year-old from Azerbaijan who was charged with possession of stolen property in April and assault/intimidation in January. His criminal history includes charges of assault, trespassing and larceny, along with convictions for assault and disorderly conduct.
Additionally, the city released a 20-year-old from Jamaica who was charged with possession of a weapon in April. His criminal history includes arrests for fraud, robbery and homicide.
ICE had asked both to be detained.
Under the city’s sanctuary policy, officials refuse to honor detainer requests from ICE after 2014 unless the suspects have been charged with one of 170 offenses considered egregious by the mayor’s office.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) said ICE officers have told her that the long-term recidivism rate for illegal immigrants arrested for other crimes and then released is about 50 percent.
Once released, illegal immigrants often evade efforts by ICE to track them down.
Officials in sanctuary cities often argue that protecting illegal immigrants promotes greater cooperation between police and immigrant communities.
“They are only able to arrest a small percent of the aliens who are released, either because of detention issues or because local law enforcement agencies do not contact them,” she said.
The number includes not only illegal immigrants of whom ICE is aware. Often, Vaughan said, local police arrest suspects they have reason to believe are living in the United States without authorization but who have not previously had fingerprints entered into federal immigration databases. Under a rational system of federal-local cooperation, local police would notify ICE in those cases, she said.
Vaughan said these facts are well-known to the architects of sanctuary policies all across the country.
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“This is deliberate on the part of these local jurisdictions,” she said.
Officials in New York and other cities and counties that have adopted sanctuary policies often argue that protecting illegal immigrants promotes greater cooperation between police and immigrant communities.
Vaughan said she is convinced sanctuary city promoters, for the most part, do not really believe that.
“That is an excuse they make up, because it’s not borne out in any data or any experience,” she said.
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
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