At the end of the month, almost all criminals arrested for state crimes in New York, including sex crimes, will be released without posting bail. It is a suicidal policy, but it is nonetheless the state’s prerogative to engage in such suicide. What is not its prerogative is the New York law that took effect this week granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens and blocking ICE access to criminal enforcement information. We have a national union with a federal government controlling immigration for a reason, and it’s time for the Trump administration to show state officials who has the final say over this issue.

Beginning this week, the NY state government is inviting any and all illegal aliens, with or without criminal records, to apply for driver’s licenses. As documentation, they can offer consular ID cards, which are fraught with fraud, expired work permits, or foreign birth certificates. They can even offer Border Crossing Cards, which are only valid for 72 hours and for a stay in the country near the border area! The state law further prohibits state and county officials from disclosing any information to ICE and bars ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from accessing N.Y. Department of Motor Vehicles (NYDMV) records and information.

This is the line outside a @nysdmv office in #Queens . About a 100 most #undocumentedimmigrants applying for a drivers license for the first time bc #greenlightlaw is now in effect. pic.twitter.com/BYKoRjbIz4

— Rocco Vertuccio (@RoccoNY1) December 16, 2019

It’s truly hard to overstate the enormity of the public safety crisis this law, dubbed “the green light law,” will spawn. There are currently 3.3 million aliens in the ICE non-detained docket who remain at large in this country. Just in one year, ICE put detainers on aliens criminally charged with 2,500 homicides. Given that New York has the fourth largest illegal alien population in the country, it is virtually certain that a large number of criminal aliens reside in the state and will now be offered legal resident documents to shield them from removal.

Some might suggest that this is the problem of New York’s residents and that it is their job and their responsibility alone to overturn these laws. But the difference between this law and their general pro-criminal laws is that when it comes to immigration, they simply lack the power to enact such a policy. Rather than the DHS and DOJ bemoaning these laws, it’s time for the Trump administration to actually stop them in their tracks. Otherwise the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution is nothing but ink on parchment.

A violation of federal law and the Constitution

8 U.S.C. § 1324 makes a felon of anyone who “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place.” That statute also makes a criminal of anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law” or anyone who “engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts.” Some form of this law has been on the books since 1891.

NY’s new law not only harbors illegal aliens but actually calls on the DMV to notify illegal aliens of any ICE interest in their files. There is only one purpose of this law: to tip off criminal alien fugitives that ICE is looking for them, the most literal violation of the law against shielding them from detection. Would we allow state officials to block information to the FBI, ATF, or DEA?

Moreover, New York’s Green Light law violates the entire purpose of the infamous 1986 amnesty bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which was “to combat the employment of illegal aliens.” The law specifically makes it “illegal for employers to knowingly hire, recruit, refer, or continue to employ unauthorized workers.” Yet the rationale for the Green Light Law, according to supporters, was “getting to work” and “ensure that our industries have the labor they need to keep our economy moving.” That directly conflicts with federal law.

Finally, 8 U.S.C. 1373 prohibits state and local government from “in any way restrict[ing], any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.” The entire purpose of this bill is to restrict all New York government entities from sending information on citizenship status to ICE.

Whether one disagrees with immigration laws or not, nobody can argue that the federal government lacks the power to enforce them. Immigration law is one of the core jobs of the federal government. People are free to go to any state once they are in the country, which is why the Founders transferred immigration policy from the states under the Articles of Confederation to the federal government under the Constitution.

This is why James Madison in Federalist #42 bemoaned that, under the Articles of Confederation, there was a “very serious embarrassment” whereby “an alien therefore legally incapacitated for certain rights in the [one state], may by previous residence only in [another state], elude his incapacity; and thus the law of one State, be preposterously rendered paramount to the law of another, within the jurisdiction of the other.” He feared that without the Constitution’s new idea of giving the federal Congress power “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” “certain descriptions of aliens, who had rendered themselves obnoxious” would choose states with weak immigration laws as entry points into the union and then move to any other state as legal residents or citizens.

As for immigration without naturalization, because of the issue of the slave trade, the first clause of Article I, Section 9 bars Congress from prohibiting “the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” until the year 1808. Well, Congress has long exercised that power to exclude over the past 200 years. New York has lacked the ability to maintain its own separate immigration scheme for quite some time.

When did the federal government become weak in the face of state rebellion?

By DHS’ own admission last week during the announcement of ICE’s fiscal year 2019 enforcement results, enforcement is losing ground thanks to sanctuary states. But when did states suddenly become so powerful in an era where they seem to rely on the federal government for everything? Yes, we believe strongly, as conservatives, in state powers over internal affairs related to health care, agriculture, education, housing, marriage, abortion, and election law – all issues the federal government and courts have stolen from states. But immigration and border affairs are 100 percent within the province of the federal government, as the Supreme Court reiterated in Arizona v. U.S.

Accordingly, it’s time for the Trump administration to treat New York as a law-breaking jurisdiction that is in a state of rebellion against the most ironclad national security powers of the federal government. Trump should refuse to sign a budget bill unless it contains a provision cutting off highway funding to New York. Illegal aliens, even those with records of drunk and reckless driving, will now have valid means of driving not only on New York’s roads but those of every other state. New York should not get federal transportation funds until the law is rescinded.

Also, Trump’s Department of Justice should send a letter warning all state and local officials that if they cooperate with this rebel law, they are in direct violation of federal law. One prudent county clerk in Erie County has already filed a lawsuit against the state warning that the law puts him at risk for federal prosecution. If DOJ officially threatens broad prosecutions, it will force internal strife and a likely change in the law.

Finally, other states run by Republicans should refuse to recognize NY driver’s licenses until the policy is overturned. Part of why states agree to reciprocity is because we all are supposed to follow the same standards of identification integrity under federal law. If New York is now going to accept any foreign document as authentication of identity, it compromises the entire integrity of a New York driver’s licenses, even outside the concern of illegal immigration.

According to a Harvard-Harris poll, 72 percent of overall voters and 76 percent of suburban voters oppose issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. There is no bigger issue over which to force a budget fight.

Remember, the Left feared that Trump would not only block amnesty but begin removing some of these illegal aliens. The Left has responded by disobeying immigration law. If the federal government allows this to stand, it will be tantamount to de facto amnesty under a Republican administration. (For more from the author of “Trump Must Go After New York’s Violation of Federal Immigration Law” please click HERE)

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ICE issued detainers on criminal aliens just this past year who were collectively charged with 2,500 murders! To put that in perspective, according to the FBI, law enforcement agencies only arrested 9,049 individuals in total for homicide in 2018. So 2,500 is roughly 28 percent of the known homicide offenders! It is the equivalent to the body count from 43 Las Vegas shootings, all committed by foreign nationals. Isn’t it time we provide more funding for ICE so we don’t continue to harbor other countries’ murderers?

The biggest headline from ICE’s comprehensive enforcement and removal operations report released yesterday was that the border surge diverted ICE operations to the point that interior arrests were down 10 percent. But there is a bigger headline embedded in the report that should disturb us all. It reveals a catastrophically huge problem of foreign criminals remaining indefinitely in the country to commit more crimes, many of whom are unknown or unsupervised. Where are Republicans fighting the issue of harboring other countries’ criminals? Where is the budget fight?

ICE’s annual enforcement report reveals that at the end of fiscal year 2019, there were 3,274,244 foreign nationals in the national docket of immigration proceedings who are officially under the supervision of ICE, but are not detained. That is an increase of 800,000 illegal aliens in just two years, and most of them committed other crimes while here.

For all the talk about ICE locking up people and record numbers in detention, only 50,000 are being detained. That means that 98.4 percent of illegal aliens who have been caught by ICE in recent years and have not yet been removed – again, mainly criminal aliens – and remain at large in the country. The same 5,000 ICE deportation officers – one-fourth the size of the NYPD – who are responsible for roughly 150,000 new arrests and 85,000 new removals a year must monitor these people as well, which include roughly 2.5 million with final or pending final removal orders.

To put that in plain English, it means that because our system has moved away from expedited removal to lawfare in the immigration courts, 3.2 million illegal aliens, over 80 percent of whom have likely committed additional crimes, remain at large in this country indefinitely with almost no supervision. That is a public security crisis of epic proportions that cuts to the core of why we have a federal government, yet Congress refuses to allocate the resources even for ICE to properly monitor, apprehend, and remove just the illegal aliens with criminal records. Over 80 percent of those arrested by ICE in recent years have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, which means that the overwhelming majority of the 3.2 million (not to mention all the criminal aliens ICE never caught) remain a danger to the public.

In 2017, the DHS inspector general found that in some field offices there is only one agent per 10,000 released aliens. Worse, the report found that that “a heavy workload limited oversight of non-detained aliens in that geographic area that ICE had flagged as risks to national security.” Now, there are one million more on the docket. . .

A few observations are in order:

This is just a tiny snapshot of the universe of criminality among illegal aliens and only includes the criminal offenses with more than 1,000 offenders. The fact that most of the crime numbers on the list are actually down roughly 10 percent from last year’s report, commensurate with the drop in total ICE apprehensions, demonstrates that ICE, even in a better year, is likely leaving a lot on the table. They caught fewer criminals this year because fewer agents were engaged in interior enforcement relative to FY 2018. Imagine how many they’d catch if they had 10,000 deportation officers rather than 5,000.

Then there are sanctuary cities and states. Most illegal aliens live in sanctuary jurisdiction where law enforcement doesn’t cooperate with ICE. Thus, there are many more crimes committed by illegal aliens that go unresolved by ICE. Just take a look at the California numbers. While California has, by far, the most illegal aliens in the country, ICE only apprehended a fraction of the number they caught in a state like Texas. For example, the Los Angeles field office only averaged about 30-40 arrests per month of those aliens with criminal charges, as compared to 300 per month for Dallas. According to Pew, L.A. metro has 2.5 times as many illegal aliens as the Dallas metro, which tells you there are likely thousands of illegal alien criminals being missed in L.A. Even the New Orleans field office averaged more total arrests than L.A., and the Salt Lake City office had more total arrests than the San Francisco office. Thus, the true number of crimes committed by illegal aliens in a given year is exponentially greater than what’s on this table.

With regard to the more serious criminals, especially murderers and repeat violent offenders, they are often serving life sentences or very long sentences and die before ICE ever apprehends them. None of those illegal aliens who fit into that category, which by definition are the worst offenders, are even accounted for in this table of cumulative crimes committed by those arrested by ICE in FY 2019.

ICE has removed roughly three million illegal aliens over the past decade. By and large, the worse of a criminal one is, the more likely he is to get deported. Inevitably, an unknown number of those removed come back into to the country. But many have also been kept out. Thus, a large percentage of the worst repeat offender aliens have been deported, yet we still see this much crime from illegal aliens. Imagine if ICE hadn’t existed at all the past decade. On the flip side, imagine how much less crime we’d have if ICE immediately removed every criminal alien after the first crime committed.

Overall, the 1,923 murder figure is what stands out. But it’s worse than that. That was the total homicide tally among those arrested by ICE this past year, which usually means people who committed murder years ago and have just finished serving their sentence in prison. ICE reported that just this year it issued detainers on individuals charged with a total of 2,500 murders. While some of them might have been legal immigrants who have been convicted of a murder a while ago and served time, the bulk of them will be front-end detainers on illegal aliens who have just recently been charged with murder. That such a large percentage of murder in this country is 100 percent avoidable is truly a national emergency.

Aside from homicides, among those who were subject to detainers in FY 2019, the illegal aliens together had a cumulative history of 56,000 assaults, 14,500 sex crimes, 5,000 robberies, and 2,500 kidnappings. Again, that’s just one year’s worth of detainers.

Unless ICE’s funding is increased and expedited removals become the norm, even if we completely shut off new illegal immigration, it would take years to dig out from the mess of bringing in millions of criminals who belong to other countries. We have truly become the global dumping ground. (For more from the author of “New ICE Report Reveals Massive Illegal Alien Crime Wave” please click HERE)

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