The recent murder committed by a twice-deported illegal immigrant gangbanger in a Maryland sanctuary county makes the following information both enraging and unbelievable; nearly 12,000 illegal immigrants with criminal histories were protected from federal authorities by sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S. during a 19-month period, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures obtained by the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
A few weeks ago CIS published a map identifying about 300 jurisdictions that have official policies shielding illegal aliens from federal authorities. During a 19-month stretch from January 1, 2014, to September 30, 2015, more than 17,000 federal detainers were rejected by these sanctuary jurisdictions, CIS found. Around 11,800 of the detainers, or 68%, were issued for individuals with a prior criminal history. “According to ICE statistics, since the Obama administration implemented the new Priority Enforcement Program in July 2015 restricting ICE use of detainers, the number of rejected detainers has declined,” CIS writes in a report accompanying the map. “However, the number of detainers issued by ICE also has declined in 2016, so it is not clear if the new policies are a factor.”
The bottom line is that hundreds of local governments across the nation shield illegal immigrants from the feds, even when they have engaged in criminal activity. In some cases they go on to commit heinous crimes that receive widespread media attention. Judicial Watch has reported many of them and launched investigations, obtaining public records from the jurisdictions that protected the criminal aliens. Back in 2008 Judicial Watch obtained records from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department—an agency long renowned for offering sanctuary—related to Edwin Ramos, an illegal alien from El Salvador who murdered three innocent...
