In a front-page story for Wednesday’s print edition, New York Post reporters Steve Janoski, Craig McCarthy, and our friend Jennie Taer detailed why, amid a long and steady stream of high-profile crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants, “federal immigration authorities aren’t deporting suspected criminals at a more rapid rate” in New York City.
The trio explained that, as per “immigration experts...it can be hard — both legally and logistically — for the feds to remove migrants before they’re convicted of a crime.”
And, thanks to soft-on-crime policies such as barring law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (and, of course, things not mentioned like bail reform), alleged criminals can skate by.
Janoski, McCarthy, and Taer pointed to two laws in the Big Apple that have hamstrung ICE and thus left New Yorkers susceptible to illegal immigrant crimes with one barring “the city from honoring ICE’s requests to hold someone for possible deportation — unless they’ve been convicted of specific violent offenses” and approved by a judge.
“The other,” they said, is a ban on “the use of city resources to help immigration enforcement.”
They highlighted one recent example of illegal immigrant crimes:
A current ICE official told The Post that the sanctuary city laws are helping propel the recent crime wave — which includes the April 2 incident in which two Venezuelan migrants accused of shoplifting in Manhattan fought back during arrest.
The NYPD, the official said, “will not contact immigration at all.”
“ICE has no idea,” the official said, adding that the city also bars the agency’s officers from entering its shelters to make arrests.
While ICE can deport someone “fairly quickly” if they are able to detain someone and/or they’re convicted of their alleged crimes, the Post reporters said the sheer number of illegal immigrants in the criminal justice system is a “logistical headache”.
In turn, they noted, “if a migrant is arrested for a more substantive crime, the agency will typically wait for the legal system to do its job, according to Robert Osuna, a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan who often works immigration cases.”
Osuna then added that, according to the Post’s summation, ICE “isn’t really targeting low-level criminals who commit relatively minor crimes like shoplifting”,
Check out their full reporting here.
