Former Attorney General Eric Holder recently said of Republicans, “When they go low, we kick them.” He was speaking in support of Stacy Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia.
Earlier this year, Abrams said she wants to cancel government agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She went on to say, “All good-minded Georgians — regardless of political party — must demand action, not rhetoric, to end the administration’s cruel policies that run counter to our nation’s values.” She was referrng to the contracts that the city of Atlanta maintains with ICE.
Abrams has spoken out against ICE as she campaigns across Georgia, saying the Trump-supported ICE “terrorizes families.”
If elected, Abrams’ anti-ICE views could move her to make Georgia an effective “sanctuary state,” much like California has become under Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. In 2017, Brown signed into law the Senate Bill 54, ending all coordination with ICE. Passage of SB 54 limits cooperation by state and local law enforcement with ICE officers on the street, causing officer safety issues, perhaps limiting calls for critical back-up. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Georgia only has two jurisdictions classified as “sanctuary cities” — Clayton County and DeKalb County. If Abrams is elected, that number will likely rise across Georgia’s other 159 counties.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were 46 law enforcement officers feloniously (non-accidentally)killed in 2017. Passage of sanctuary city laws forces ICE officers to actively arrest at-large aliens; meaning aliens released from jails or police custody into the public. The passage also prevents ICE from receiving critical, perhaps lifesaving, back-up from their state and local counterparts. This was seen this last summer in Portland, when the Democratic mayor ordered police to not respond to ICE’s repeated calls for assistance. President Trump admonished the mayor saying, “Last month, the mayor of Portland, Oregon shamefully ordered local police to stand down, leaving federal law enforcement officers to face an angry mob of violent people….Any politician who puts criminal aliens before American citizens should find a new line of work, because it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General reported that ICE officers suffered 48 assaults in 2017, up nearly 100 percent from 25 in 2016. Most of the reported assaults occurred in the sanctuary state of California, according to the DHS Inspector General. The actual number may be higher — ICE admitted they did not adequately track assaults on their officers.
The continued movement to pass sanctuary city laws is placing ICE in the direct crosshairs of violent at-large felons. ICE’s main immigration mission is to “identify, arrest, and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety…”
ICE statistics for 2017 show that arrests of criminally convicted aliens, and those pending criminal charges, accounted for 127,992 out of 143,470 arrests. Only about 24,000 of those arrests were “at-large,” meaning in the public. Most ICE arrests happened within a secure facility, such as a jail or prison, where conditions are safer.
Sanctuary city passage has the potential of allowing over a hundred thousand criminally convicted aliens free passage into the public, forcing ICE officers to risk life and limb in apprehending them, all for no good reason. Abrams and other politicians should think twice before placing ICE agents’ lives on the line based for a nice bit of political rhetoric. And voters should think twice about supporting her and other such politicians.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a former Supervisor with DHS, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and a nationally recognized whistleblower for the 2015 release of Unaccompanied Alien Children to criminal sponsors.
