In President Donald Trump's executive order, entitled "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States," which he signed on January 25, he declared that, "Interior enforcement of our Nation's immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States."
So in effect, the president required DHS component U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to publish a weekly "Declined Detainer Outcome Report," which, according to a press release, will "highlight jurisdictions that choose not to cooperate with ICE detainers or requests for notification, therefore potentially endangering Americans."
This Monday, ICE has released its first weekly Declined Detainer report. ICE described what a detainer is in their latest release.
ICE places detainers on aliens who have been arrested on local criminal charges or who are in local custody and for whom ICE possesses probable cause to believe that they are removable from the United States, so that ICE can take custody of the alien when he or she is released from local custody.
A detainer becomes declined when law enforcement agencies do not honor ICE's detainer, and continue to release the "criminal alien" back into the public, according to DHS. Ultimately, the report is taking shots at sanctuary cities-- which Trump has continuously promised to quash.
CNN reported on the contents noting that, "The report lays out 206 declined "detainers" that were registered in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement databases for the week of January 28 to February 3."
The top 10 offending counties are as follows, as CNN listed from the report: Clark County, Nevada; Nassau County, New York; Cook County, Illinois; Montgomery County, Iowa; Snohomish County, Washington; Franklin County, New York; Washington County, Oregon; Alachua County, Florida; Franklin County, Iowa; and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
ICE continued to explain why this report is deemed necessary and what exactly it consists of.
“When law enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders, it undermines ICE’s ability to protect the public safety and carry out its mission,” said Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan. “Our goal is to build cooperative, respectful relationships with our law enforcement partners. We will continue collaborating with them to help ensure that illegal aliens who may pose a threat to our communities are not released onto the streets to potentially harm individuals living within our communities.”The Declined Detainer Outcome Report is a weekly report that lists the jurisdictions that have declined to honor ICE detainers or requests for notification and includes examples of criminal charges associated with those released aliens. The report provides information on declined detainers and requests for notification for that reporting period. A jurisdiction’s appearance on this report is not an exclusive factor in determining a jurisdiction’s level of cooperation with ICE. This report is intended to provide the public with information regarding criminal actions committed by aliens and any jurisdiction that ignores or otherwise failed to honor any detainers or requests for notification with respect to such aliens.
DHS also published a fact sheet on the report and a Q&A to provide for more transparency.
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