ICE acting director rips sanctuary city mayors for helping illegal aliens avoid arrest

By Jason Hopkins

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence took a swipe at U.S. mayors who announced their opposition to planned immigration raids.

“The entire public is safer when law enforcement works together,” Albence said Sunday on Fox News, reacting to several mayors across the country who declared they would not be helping federal immigration authorities locate and apprehend illegal aliens living in their jurisdictions.

Public domain

Matthew Albence, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

“It’s incredulous that it’s OK for these law enforcement agencies and these jurisdictions to enforce the laws that they’re sworn to uphold, but when we come in to do our enforcement that we’re sworn to uphold, all the sudden it’s a problem,” he said.

Albence’s comments came the same day as ICE agents are to conduct sweeping raids in major U.S. cities and elsewhere. The agency is expected to apprehend, and eventually deport, roughly 2,000 illegal immigrants who have ignored court orders to leave the country.

Liberal mayors are not the only ones opposed to the operation.

A number of high-profile Democrats have not only come out against the raids, but have given public instructions on how to avoid arrest by an ICE agent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, said during her weekly press conference on July 11 that a deportation warrant is not the same as a search warrant and that illegal immigrants should simply not open the door if an agent comes knocking.

Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted out a Spanish language instructional pamphlet on July 11 for illegal aliens to follow, advising them not to open the door and to report any ICE activity they see.

The agency chief, however, had issue with the terminology being widely used to describe Sunday’s operation, making clear that ICE is only targeting people who have defined an immigration judge’s order.

“I think using the term ‘raid’ does everybody a disservice. We are doing targeted enforcement actions against specific individuals who have had their day in immigration court and have been ordered removed by an immigration judge. We are merely executing those lawfully issued judge’s orders,” Albence explained.

“These are individuals who have come into this country illegally, had the opportunity to make an asylum claim in front of an immigration judge, and most of them chose not to avail themselves at the opportunity, and didn’t even show up to their first hearing,” he continued.

Albence added his agency went “above and beyond” by giving these specific individuals the chance in February to turn themselves and be removed in an orderly process, but only 3% responded and turned themselves in. The other 97% ignored their requests.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Image courtesy of Public domain

5 thoughts on “ICE acting director rips sanctuary city mayors for helping illegal aliens avoid arrest

  1. I want these deportarions, and more, carried out. However, advising is not against the law. What is against the law is hiding fugitives, which is yet another slippery unprosecutable slope in sanctuary cities/states. We need to legally do away with allowing politicians to blanketedly declare their city or state as sanctuary to give residency to illegal aliens, especially those already with deportation judgements. The term sanctuary doesn’t even apply to anything other than criminals here in America where we have religious freedom, so first we need to legally define what sanctuary is here. Since it is not legally defined, we have no legal ground to honor sanctuary cities or states, so the federal government has every right to come and remove any illegal person claiming sanctuary under this false umbrella of protection. The arrest need to be made of aiding and abetting in order to stand in court, but these politicians do need to go down, these illegals need to be deported, and we need to stand tough to stop this invasion and reclaim America for Americans and those who’ve applied legally to become citizens. ALL others need to go.

  2. What ever became of holding elected officials accountable when they violate the oath they take when taking office? How about swearing to uphold and enforce the laws “so help me God”, for example???

  3. Illegals, what is it that Liberals DemocRATs don’t understand about that word ??

    When you have politicians that are unwilling to uphold the law of the land, the same
    laws that they put into place……….Hypocrites.

    So instead of helping all of the ICE agents, these hypocrites hide behind an agenda
    to ruin the country ………..

    2020 just around the corner …..send these fools packing before it’s too late !!

  4. So many liberals have recently been screaming “obstruction of justice!” with little to no evidence to support their claims. Making it difficult to impossible for our immigration officers to do their job is truly obstruction of justice. I would love to know just what type of immigration system these morons envision. Do they plan to continue a dual system where a small percentage of qualified applicants is forced to jump through all of the bureaucratic hoops in order to gain entrance to this country, while hundreds of thousands of individuals with unknown backgrounds run across the border and take up residence? Or do they envision completely eliminating borders and just wish to see everyone pour in? I wonder how long their dream of a borderless nation will last if large groups of conservatives begin arriving on our shores…………….

Comments are closed.