Among the many titles New York City has earned over the last 400 years, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) announced Tuesday that America’s melting pot had become the most dangerous sanctuary community in the nation.
The 35-year-old institute, which advocates for reducing legal immigration from over a million to 300,000 a year, vows to defend the rights of individual Americans and their local communities from harm and challenges caused by mass migration to the United States.
In a recent report, the institute listed the top ten sanctuary communities that have posed significant dangers nationwide — with New York City leading the way.
“These communities have earned their places on this list because of incredibly poor leadership at the city, county, and state levels,” Dale L. Wilcox, IRLI’s executive director and general counsel, said in a statement. “Data overwhelmingly shows that sanctuary policies lead to more crime, fear, and death.”
“The leaders of these communities should not escape accountability for the damage they have caused,” Wilcox added. “Their residents deserve much more.”
For New York City, it’s not hard to see how the Big Apple turned rotten over the last eight years under former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s radical sanctuary policies. Almost every day, the public sees cell phone videos, surveillance footage, and reports that expose rampant theft, violent attacks, rapes, and murders sweeping across the city from citizens and non-citizens.
New mayor and former New York Police Department officer Eric Adams has pledged to clean up his predecessor’s disregard for community safety. Still, the rhetoric to crack down on rampant crime falls on deaf ears when he openly supported the city’s sanctuary status and continued de Blasio’s pro-illegal immigrant policies such as allowing a non-citizen voting law.
Just before COVID changed the United States and the world, New York City released more than 7,500 illegal immigrants — some of whom had previous murder and sexual abuse convictions — back into the diverse communities across the five Burroughs.
Breitbart reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Matthew Albence revealed that in 2019, the 7,500 illegal immigrants released into communities by NYC law enforcement had a total of 17,873 criminal convictions and 6,500 criminal charges against them.
Those criminal convictions and charges included 200 homicides, more than 1,000 sexual offenses, and 500 robberies. Others had more than 3,500 assaults, 1,500 DUIs, and 1,000 weapons violations.
“The only immigrants protected by such policies are those committing violent and dangerous offenses, often in the same communities that these politicians are purporting to protect,” Albence said during the press conference. “These are preventable crimes, people, and more importantly, preventable victims.”
With New York City leading the way, other cities include Democrat-run metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Trailing behind follows more blue cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland. Wake County, North Carolina, and Middlesex County, New Jersey, were also included.
“Sanctuary policies only provide sanctuary to criminals, not to immigrant communities,” Tom Homan, IRLI senior fellow and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said in a statement. “Immigrant communities don’t want criminals in their neighborhoods either.”
“Victims and witnesses of crime don’t want the offender back in their communities to seek revenge,” Homan added. “All communities deserve protection from criminals, but sanctuary policies put immigrant communities at greater risk of crime.”
While many of the cities include radical soft-on-crime district attorneys funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, the institute argues that illegal immigrants with a dangerous history have created an unsafe environment for those communities that have poured their lives into living what’s left of the American Dream.