Democrat Athen, Georgia Mayor Kelly Girtz is facing heat for defending the city’s policies of protecting illegal immigrants just days after 22-year-old Laken Riley was murdered by a man illegally living in the United States.
According to emails obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), Girtz shield illegal aliens from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who were living in the sanctuary city, saying that he supports non-cooperation policies with detainers issued by the agency.
“While the community is experiencing deep trauma right now, and emotions are understandably raw, I support the detainer policy as one that is both humane and following the well-documented propensity of immigrants in the U.S. to be less criminally inclined than the native-born population,” Girtz wrote in an email to Clarke County Sheriff John Williams on Feb. 24.
“One protocol that arises in discussion sometimes is the willingness (or lack thereof) of a jail to honor ICE detainers and hold in jail undocumented persons who have not committed an offense for which no legal resident would be held, simply because a person is undocumented,” Girtz continued. “Your predecessor modified the Sheriff’s Office’s prior stance to eliminate detainer holds.”
The mayor’s email came in response to Williams demanding to know whether Girtz considers Athens to be a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.
“If the [Athens-Clarke County Unified Government] embraces being considered a sanctuary, then come out and say so. If not please clear this up,” Williams wrote. “If the ACCGOV will not address this, I will do everything in my power to protect the integrity and professionalism of the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office and myself.”
According to the American Immigration Council, cities such as Athens often neglect its responsibility to honor ICE detainers which requires state and local law enforcement to notify the agency before illegal immigrants are released from state custody so that ICE can transfer them to federal authorities for potential deportation.
Girtz explained to Williams in his email that he wanted to “focus on the victim” and not “political messaging.”
“The term ‘sanctuary city’ does not have a sole legal or procedural definition; instead it is a somewhat generic term that means different things to different people depending on the context of a discussion,” Girtz wrote. “Many of the elements ascribed to ‘sanctuary cities’ are explicitly prohibited by state code. For example, in Georgia, a government-issued identification card cannot be provided by the state to undocumented persons.”