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The "sanctuary" policy implemented by the sheriff in Austin, Texas, has helped keep illegal aliens charged with robbery, violent acts and threats of terrorism from being apprehended by federal immigration officers, according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

A so-called sanctuary policy is a decision not to aid federal officials with requests to detain illegal immigrants so they can be apprehended for reasons related to illegal immigration. When an illegal alien is in the custody of a sheriff's office or police department, ICE can submit a detainer request. If the local agency cooperates with the detainer, it allows the federal officers the opportunity to arrange a transfer to take the person into custody before they are released.

Judicial Watch said in a statement that a review of the detainer requests for a total of 204 aliens, which were denied by the Austin sheriff, shows those people "were charged or convicted of 31 acts of violence, 14 thefts or burglaries, and three acts or threats of terrorism."

The statement also said that 44 of the denied requests were for "inmates originally detained by Homeland Security and temporarily transferred to Travis County (home to the state capital in Austin) for disposition of state or local charges."

The Travis County Sheriff's office has been in a public battle with Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has threatened to withhold certain funds from agencies in the state that enact sanctuary policies.

Continued here:
Judicial Watch: Sanctuary policy protected criminal illegal immigrants in Austin, Texas - Washington Examiner

Joseph Turner of American Children First filed a ballot initiative April 3 to prohibit illegal aliens from attending school in the Yucaipa Calimesa Joint Unified School District. The initiative requires 3,200 signatures to be put on the ballot.

Turner has been politically active for the past several years, and especially vocal on illegal immigration. He founded Save Our State in 2004 and lost endorsement of the San Bernardino School Distirct when he ran as a school board member in 2006 because of his anti-illegal immigration stance. He worked for San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors office writing press releases for Neil Derry in 2009.

He said in an interview with KABC that he specifically chose Yucaipa, almost 90 miles from his office in Torrance, because the community is (a) conservative community.

YCJUSD Superintendent of Cali Binks said, The Yucaipa Calimesa School District has not been contacted by Joseph Turner and was unaware of the press conference (with KABC) held in Yucaipa.

Clerk of the School Board Sharon Bannister also commented on the initiative.

Our mission is to provide an education for all members of our community from preschool programs, our elementary, middle and high school programs to our growing adult school program, she said. YCJUSD welcomes everyone to be a lifelong learner.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Plyler v. Doe in 1982, holding that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education on account of their immigration status. Turner is hoping to overturn that decision.

The reaction of local parents with children who have attended Yucaipa-Calimesa schools runs the gamut from support to anger to thoughts of the future.

Diana Grieco, who has had all five of her children educated by the local school district, supports Turners initiative.

I dont think we should pay for them if they are here illegally, Grieco said. I feel bad for the kids, but their parents should become citizens.

Debra Wagner, who also has children in the school district, agrees with Grieco.

I support the initiative because its not fair for us to support everyone who is here illegally, she said. Those who are here legally are already struggling, with cuts to school programs, like music. We need to take care of the people who are here before giving to others who are here wrongfully.

Other local residents have a different perspective.

It makes me really, really angry that someone who has never attended our school district or had his children go to our school district and is not part of our community is targeting us to serve his own personal agenda, said Kim Gopperton, who went to school in Yucaipa, as did her children. I dont like it and I really resent that.

Others consider what will happen if education to children who are already here is denied.

Children, legal or illegal, should have the same opportunity to get an education that will benefit not only their futures but also the future of every American, said Barbara Davis, another mother with children in the school district. Children, no matter what race or ethnicity, are the future of this country.

Here is the original post:
Ballot initiative seeks to ban illegal immigrants from school - Yucaipa/Calimesa News Mirror

A story published by The Hill last month about two studies claiming that immigrants commit less crime than U.S. born citizens misses the point that President Trump and other Americans are concerned over the crimes committed by illegal aliens, not legal immigrants. And the existing records on those crimes, like the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015, are truly shocking.

Ronald Mortensen points out some of the methodological problems with these studies in his recent piece in The Hill. But the problems are even worse. The Cato study concluded that legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives and the Sentencing Project concluded in their report that foreign-born residents of the United States commit crime less often than native-born citizens.

Instead of using official crime data, these reports also use surveys. The Sentencing Project measures crime and related behavior based on self-reported accounts of behavior and Cato uses the United States Census American Community Survey (ACS). For obvious reasons, there is little incentive for anyone, let alone criminal aliens, to self-report their crimes. Many respondents will likely also fail to disclose that they are not a citizen out of fear of discovery and deportation.

These studies overlook disturbing actual data on crimes committed by criminal aliens. For example, the Government Accountability Office released two unsettling reports in 2005 on criminal aliens who are in prison for committing crimes in the United States, and issued an updated report in 2011.

The first report found that criminal aliens, both legal and illegal, make up 27 percent of all federal prisoners. Yet non-citizens are only about nine percent of the nations adult population. Thus, judging by the numbers in federal prisons alone, non-citizens commit federal crimes at three times the rate of citizens.

The findings in the second report are even more disturbing. It reviewed the criminal histories of 55,322 aliens in federal or state prisons and local jails who entered the country illegally. Those illegal aliens were arrested 459,614 times, an average of 8.3 arrests per illegal alien, and committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, an average of roughly 12.7 offenses per illegal alien.

The 2011 GAO report is more of the same. The criminal histories of 251,000 criminal aliens showed that they had committed close to three million criminal offenses. Sixty-eight percent of those in federal prison and 66 percent of those in state prisons were from Mexico. Their offenses ranged from homicide and kidnapping to drugs, rape, burglary, and larceny.

Once again, these statistics are not fully representative of crimes committed by illegal aliens this report only reflects the criminal histories of aliens who were in prison. If there were a way to include all crimes committed by criminal aliens, the numbers would likely be higher since prosecutors often drop criminal charges against an illegal alien if immigration authorities will deport the alien.

The GAO reports also highlight another flaw in using survey data from a national sample. A key factor highlighted in the GAO reports is that criminal aliens from Mexico disproportionately make up incarcerations and that most arrests are made in the three border states of California, Texas, and Arizona.

In sum, it has not been proven that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lesser rate than either native-born or naturalized American citizens. In fact, existing data may support the opposite conclusion.

But even if it were true, it would be irrelevant to the point being made by President Trump that none of the millions of crimes committed by illegal aliens would occur if they were not in the country in the first place or were deported when they were caught instead of being turned loose to repeatedly prey on other victims. That is a simple truth that too many American families know from personal experience.

Hans von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is the coauthor,along with John Fund, of Whos Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obamas Enforcer: Eric Holders Justice Department.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Crimes by illegal aliens, not legal immigrants, are the real problem ... - The Hill (blog)

Illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border has continued to fall under President Trump, dropping 67 percent through the end of March, the former border commissioner told Congress on Tuesday.

Thats even bigger than the drop reported for February, when the number of illegal immigrants caught a yardstick for the overall flow dropped by 40 percent.

Its actually up to 67 percent drop compared to last year, David V. Aguilar, a former chief of the Border Patrol and former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation of the numbers Mr. Aguilar cited.

The agency has been releasing its monthly figures each month, though the March figures have not been released.

But a drop anywhere close to the 67 percent figure Mr. Aguilar cited would be stunning, and suggests the early steps the president has taken to free up agents to enforce immigration laws at the interior and the border, and his plans to build a border wall, have deterred tens of thousands of would-be crossers.

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Mr. Aguilar said these kinds of drops have occurred before, during the Reagan administration, after Congress passed a broad amnesty granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, and promised to get tough on enforcement.

The legalization followed, but the tough enforcement didnt come and illegal immigration soared in the ensuing 20 years.

Presidents change and lawmakers come and go, but The Washington Times is always here, and FREE online. Please support our efforts.

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Illegal immigration down 67 percent under Trump: Former commissioner - Washington Times

BOSTON The state of Massachusetts on Tuesday asked its top court to find that state authorities lack the authority to detain illegal immigrants who come in contact with the legal system to buy time for federal authorities to take them into custody.

The hearing amounted to a challenge to requests by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for courts and law enforcement agencies to keep illegal immigrants facing civil deportation orders in custody for up to 48 hours after their cases are resolved, a practice expected to step up under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The state argued that keeping someone in custody after his or her case is resolved amounted to a fresh arrest of the person without sufficient legal justification.

"Probable cause for civil removability is simply not a basis for arrest under Massachusetts law," Jessica Barnett, an assistant state attorney general told the court. She noted that state law does not specifically give law enforcement agencies the power to arrest people facing civil deportation proceedings.

The U.S. Justice Department argued the detainer requests reflect basic practices of cooperation between various law enforcement agencies.

"From our perspective, all states have an inherent authority to police their sovereignty," said Joshua Press, the lawyer representing the Justice Department.

The case was sparked by the arrest last year of Sreynuon Lunn, a man who Press said entered the United States as a refugee in 1985 and was ordered deported to Cambodia in 2008 after a series of criminal convictions.

Cambodia had declined to accept him and he was released. He was arrested in Boston on an unarmed robbery charge and ordered released in February after prosecutors failed to present a case. While he was waiting to be let out from his court holding cell, federal ICE officials took him into custody.

As a practical matter, his arrest by ICE makes the case moot but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed to take the case on premise that cooperation between law enforcement in the state and ICE would come up again.

Trump has made immigration enforcement a centerpiece of his presidency, vowing to wall off the Mexican border, deport an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the country and cut off Justice Department grants to cities that fail to help U.S. immigration authorities.

Attorneys for Lunn and the state largely agreed on the matter, with both sides contending that state agencies lacked authority to comply with the ICE detainer requests. But Lunn's attorneys went further, arguing that the detainer process violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of due process because judges are not involved in issuing them.

"There is no fixing the constitutional problems here," said Emma Winger, a public defense attorney representing Lunn.

Lunn's attorneys have declined to answer questions about the status of the deportation case. The court did not immediately rule on the matter.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Marguerita Choy)

CLEVELAND One of two men suspected of opening fire in a crowded Cincinnati nightclub, killing one person and injuring 16 others, died on Tuesday as a result of gunshot wounds suffered in the shootout, police said.

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. A Pennsylvania survivalist accused of killing a state trooper in a 2014 sniper attack goes on trial on Tuesday, in a case that had put the state's Pocono Mountain region on edge when the suspect evaded capture for weeks by hiding deep in the woods.

A New Jersey teen has pleaded guilty to participating in a plot to try to kill Pope Francis in 2015 during a public Mass in Philadelphia, according to a statement by federal prosecutors.

Link:
Massachusetts challenges immigration detention in state court - Reuters