The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is refusing to comply with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) requests to notify them of the illegal status of held immigrants.
KFI AM 640 reports that in 2016, the LAPD didn’t honor any of ICE’s requests. This year they have received over 300 ICE requests and have no intention of complying with them:
“We never will” help w civil immigration enforcement, says LAPD Chief Beck. pic.twitter.com/Uc4AAbAErt
— Eric Leonard (@LeonardFiles) March 21, 2017
It’s city policy for Los Angeles to ignore ICE’s detainer requests unless they have a warrant obtained from a judge on the grounds that the illegal immigrant committed a violent crime. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a directive that enjoined all city officials to follow this policy.
“We don’t honor ICE detainer requests without a warrant that’s signed by a judge,” Garcetti said. “We do have an interest with our federal law enforcement officials of getting serious, violent felons and criminals off our streets.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has received 2,395 detainer requests from ICE so far this year; they have honored 1,007 of them. According to KFI, “Most arrestees awaiting trial are held in L.A. County Sheriff’s jails, even if they’re initially arrested by other agencies, including the LAPD, which is part of why the number of requests for the Sheriff’s Department is so much higher.”
Sanctuary cities endanger Americans since they undermine law enforcement, thereby increasing crime. It’s no surprise then that Los Angeles, a sanctuary city, has seen an increase in violent crime for three consecutive years:
With more than 290 people killed in the city this year, homicides also rose for the third year in a row. Still, the city remains far safer than a decade ago, when 480 people were killed and there were 46% more robberies than this year.
According to statistics from the Los Angeles Police Department, robberies were up by 13%, aggravated assaults were up by 10% and rapes were down by 4% through Dec. 17, compared with the same period last year. Homicides were up by 5%.
Overall, violent crime was up by 10% over last year and 38% over two years ago.
Property crime also went up for the third consecutive year, with a 4% rise that was driven by double-digit increases in car-related thefts.
Los Angeles houses the second-highest number of illegals among sanctuary cities, behind only New York City.
So long as Los Angeles clings to its sanctuary city policy and the LAPD refuses to honor ICE’s detainer requests, violent crime will continue to rise.