The informant was on the phone with a Phoenix police detective when one of his accomplices overheard the conversation. The detective heard a loud scream and the line went silent.
The next day, the conspirators, who were all Russian immigrants like the informant, drove the informant to an isolated patch of desert 100 miles outside Phoenix.
Someone offered the informant a blindfold but he refused.
When the gun they brought with them misfired, the informant was doused with gasoline, set afire and left to die.
His body was found two days later.
One of the men involved, Dennis Valerievich Tsoukanov, avoided a life sentence by turning in evidence, receiving a sentence of just 13 years for his role in the kidnapping and brutal murder of a police informant.
Once he completed his sentence, Tsoukanov was remanded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for extradition to his native Russia.
Eight months later, however, he walked out the doors of the ICE detention facility a free man.
Tsoukanov is hardly alone. More than
36,000 illegal aliens convicted of felonies were released by ICE in 2013 pending determination of their deportation proceedings.
Tsoukanov’s case is not unusual. While his crime was a particularly violent homicide of a police informant, he was only one of
193 convicted murderers that ICE turned loose in 2013.
Nor was he even the only convicted kidnapper let back on the streets by ICE: In 2013, there were 426.
All of this is happening as part of the Obama administration’s Priority Enforcement Program.
Some priorities. Some enforcement.
Across the United States, American lives and property are placed at risk by a criminal deportation process that is out of control. Local sheriff’s offices and police departments are being handcuffed in performing our public safety responsibilities.
ICE releases dangerous criminals, hundreds of them convicted of serious felonies and crimes of violence,
without even putting local law enforcement on notice. Law enforcement doesn’t know these convicted murderers, kidnappers and other violent criminals are back on our streets — not until they are arrested for their next crime.
That’s particularly unsettling in the case of
sex offenders.
In 2013, ICE opened detention facility doors holding 426 individuals convicted of
felony sexual assault who should have been deported, if ICE was doing its job.
In many jurisdictions, communities are assured by statute that they will be informed if a convicted sex offender is released into their neighborhoods. That notification cannot happen if local law enforcement doesn’t even know they are back on the loose.
In some cases, deportees are released because, in the opinion of several federal courts, the new “Priority Enforcement Program” detainer form fails to satisfy constitutional due process requirements.
Worse, the executive branch is
telling ICE to stand down, effectively handcuffing federal agents on the ground. The Obama administration has essentially turned Border Patrol agents into a “free” transportation and housing hub for drug smugglers and human traffickers.
ICE could correct this particular defect by seeking the appointment of federal magistrates who would have responsibility for issuing the detainers, as opposed to non-judicial ICE bureaucrats. Yet not a whimper has been heard from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security or the Obama administration, which concocted the Priority Enforcement Program in the first place.
As Americans go to the polls, federal candidates of all stripes — Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives — assure us that, whatever their approach to immigration, they agree on the need for prompt deportation of “the worst criminals” among America’s millions of undocumented immigrants.
As these candidates ask for your vote, remind them of Dennis Valerievich Tsoukanov, the man who helped burn a police informant to death and how he was released from the ICE detention facility just months after completing his prison sentence.
Tell them about the other 36,000 convicted felons that ICE put back on the streets in 2013 alone.
The Priority Enforcement Program isn’t living up to its billing — and we must demand reform.
Jonathan Thompson is CEO of the National Sheriffs’ Association. Leon Wilmot is sheriff of Yuma County, Ariz. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
