President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security issued a list Monday of counties in which law enforcement agencies have refused to comply with immigration officials in deporting illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes.
Clark County, Nev., and Nassau County, N.Y., are the top two on ICE's list. Between Jan. 28 and Feb. 3 of this year, law enforcement in Clark declined 51 detainers while those in Nassau declined 38. The other counties listed declined less than fifteen.
"When criminal aliens are released from local or state custody, they have the opportunity to reoffend," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement, according to The Hill. "It is much safer for everyone – the community, law enforcement, and even the criminal alien – if ICE officers take custody of the alien in the controlled environment of another law enforcement agency as opposed to visiting a reported alien’s residence, place of work, or other public area."
The National Immigration Law Center's Avideh Moussavian, a staff lawyer, said police usually work with federal law enforcement in criminal cases, but not civil cases like immigration offenses.
"They've created this totally false narrative that somehow local law enforcement is obstructing their work because they're not holding people when the local law enforcement authorities have no basis for holding that person any longer," Moussavian told The Washington Post.
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