The Washington Times “right wing-ish”? More like the John Birch Society if that still means anything to people.
The WT, originally founded as a ministry of the Unification Church, absolutely loves any possibility of anyone being arrested and punished for stepping out of line. (I’m not saying some people don’t need to be arrested and ultimately punished, just to be clear.) But last year they positively crowed with delight when Sessions first hinted at the possibility of cracking down on cannabis in the states that have voted to allow it. And now that Sessions has more recently opened the way for the AGs to use their discretion in that regard, I’m sure they’re doing it again right now. I haven’t bothered to look, yet.
Much like they did with the legal drinking age. Younger people today may not even be aware that the states used to set their minimum legal drinking age completely on their own.
I’m pretty sure places like California already turn dangerous criminals over to ICE, or whatever they’re called now. What upsets homeland security is they want the police to run status checks on all arrests. So even if somebody is arrested for, say, public intoxication, and they’re an illegal immigrant, DHS wants to know about it, and what most of these “sanctuary cities” have said is, we won’t do that…we won’t automatically ask about somebody’s immigration status just because they’ve been arrested.
I don’t think they care about Jose Garcia Zarate (Kate Steinle’s killer) “as a person” either. Am I badly misunderstanding the point you’re trying to make? It seems nonsensical to me, but it’s possibly just the lack of Mountain Dew clouding my mind.
So they know when to send out the press releases about the Pistol Whipping Rapist, but can’t be there when he’s released? Do the feds lose jurisdiction within 1000 feet of a prison, so they can’t be sitting there? We ARE talking about the federal government, a body that has the greatest reach in history, and they can’t figure out how to read a release date?
The locals detained him for the entirety of his sentence. How much more of the feds’ job do they have to do?
Arresting the mayor/councilmen of cities who voted in “sanctuary” is something that should have done after the very first one. There’s no constitutional crisis here, there is just malfeasance in office and conspiracy to violate federal law.
Thank you. I don’t see that 1324 applies - what is forbidden under that part of US Code is actual trafficking or concealment of illegal aliens.
It’s harder for me to fully understand 1373, but I think the connection you’re drawing is that Libby Schaaf, the mayor of Oakland, has, using her powers as authorized under California, ordered city officials not to cooperate with federal immigration officials (we’ll just let slide that this part of US Code refers to INS, which is not really an agency anymore, AFAIK), which may constitute illegal interference with State/Local officials’ duties wrt exchanging information with the INS. That seems like a pretty tortured reading of that statute. The closest analogy I can think of is that it is clearly illegal for me, as an individual, to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of a crime. There are actual statutes forbidding that and actual prosecutions that have happened. But a mayor could certainly order a police chief not to lend any help. You could potentially construe that as interfering with the investigation, but it would never hold up. Similarly, a mayor can order city officials not to cooperate with INS, and that constitutes a legal exercise of her power.
Let’s take that analogy even further. What the feds want is: not only am I not allowed to interfere with an investigation, they want me to turn over any info I may have come across, even before they ask for it. And even further, they want me to actively investigate anyone’s status that I may come across in the course of my daily activities.
Not only am I (and state and local authorities) under no obligation to proactively cooperate (on my own time and dime) with the feds; I have no jurisdiction to do so.
8 USC 1373 doesn’t appear to be a criminal statute. Can’t be arrested for something that isn’t a crime. Maybe the Federal government could sue or something.
I’d like to see the set of facts that would lead to a prosecution under 8 USC 1324, bearing in mind that a statute can’t make illegal what the Constitution protects. If states have a constitutional protection from being compelled to enforce Federal statutes, then a Federal statute cannot violate that protection.
And finally, in terms of the DHS review of how to prosecute state and local officials, I’ll bet people that the results of this review will be published a few weeks after the final report of the commission investigating many millions of illegal votes in the 2016 elections. In other words, don’t hold your breath.