Local jails not at fault here

BOTH DIANE Dimond in the Dec. 9 op-ed “Not Every Immigrant Deserves Sanctuary” and the editor in the Dec. 10 editorial “Head Start from Justice” leave out a key fact in their pieces. They complain that jails release nonimmigrants without giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the notification it had requested.

If ICE really wants to get someone into custody, it can file a legal criminal complaint and get an actual detainer/ arrest warrant for a person. Federal law makes it a felony for a non-citizen to come back without permission after being deported. ICE can, and does, file criminal complaints against non-citizens found in prisons or jails, and then prosecutes them for illegal re-entry once they finish their other sentence or pay a bond. When ICE does that, there is actually an arrest warrant lodged against the person, and the person is transferred to federal custody and is not released.

In April, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued an order establishing zero tolerance — every non-citizen found here without documents should be prosecuted for illegal entry, a misdemeanor, or illegal re-entry, a felony. As a result, our immigration crime prosecutions have gone way up in this district, and we were already one of the busiest in the country.

So to complain that local jails are not holding people when they have no legal authority to do so — the ICE request is a request for notification, not a detainer — because an ICE agent has chosen to lodge a request rather than a criminal complaint and arrest warrant is disingenuous and misleading.

What sanctuary is about is protecting the non-criminals — making crime victims and witnesses feel safe in coming forward and reporting crime, knowing that they won’t be turned over to ICE for doing so. That keeps crime down in this city and makes us all safer. KARI CONVERSE Albuquerque