From New York to Chicago and the Denver suburbs, migrant gangs are mugging, raping, robbing stores, running brothels next to elementary schools and threatening apartment dwellers with guns in residential buildings — all without fear of being deported.
The gangs are turning neighborhoods into hellholes.
Blame insane “sanctuary” laws.
The word “sanctuary” sounds charitable, but don’t be fooled.
It doesn’t mean welcoming the downtrodden, but actually bars police from sharing arrest information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement so that the agency can take custody of illegal immigrants arrested for violent crimes and deport them.
Sanctuary laws, in effect, shield criminals who don’t belong in the United States from removal. Eleven states and some 600 towns and cities, mostly controlled by Democrats, have them.
Because of these laws, migrant lawbreakers go through a revolving-door justice system — and end up back on the streets to strike again.
Americans have a choice: On Saturday, presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to work with Congress to “end all sanctuary cities . . . across our country.”
Or we can choose Vice President Kamala Harris — who has apparently taken a vow of silence on questions of policy.
But her record shows that San Franciscans died because of her stance on migrant crime when she presided as the city’s top prosecutor.
In 2008 Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, murdered a man and his two sons.
Prior to the triple murder, Ramos had a history of juvenile arrests for assault and attempted robbery. Had San Francisco police cooperated with federal immigration authorities, Ramos might have been deported, instead of free to kill.
Similarly Rony Aguilera, who came to the US illegally from Honduras, murdered Ivan Miranda in 2008. Aguilera had had several earlier run-ins with police, but he remained in San Francisco, ready to unleash violence.
The media have painted a heroic picture of Harris’ career in law enforcement, making claims that she “cracked down on violent offenders” as San Francisco’s district attorney and as California’s attorney general.
But the coverage conveniently omits any mention of Ramos, Aguilera and their victims.
As a US senator, Harris in 2017 voted against a bill that would have increased penalties for criminals who illegally enter after being deported and commit more crimes. The bill went down to defeat.
Two years later, when Harris launched her first campaign for president, she declared that local law enforcement “should not act as federal immigration agents” in response to an American Civil Liberties Union candidates’ questionnaire.
As attorney general, she told the ACLU, she had instructed California law-enforcement agencies that “they did not have to comply with ICE detainers” — that is, she encouraged them to ignore federal requests to hold migrant suspects for deportation.
These same policies are now causing migrant crime to explode in multiple jurisdictions.
Six Colorado counties being menaced by the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua are suing to overturn state sanctuary laws that prevent local police from cooperating with ICE to send gang members packing.
New York’s sanctuary laws have enabled the same gang to set up headquarters in migrant shelters across the five boroughs and terrorize the public without fear of deportation.
Crime victims can thank their own woke politicians.
Mayor Adams has called for amending the city’s sanctuary laws — but the far-left City Council isn’t budging.
Last week, House Republicans offered a bill to withhold federal aid for migrants from sanctuary jurisdictions.
Outrageously, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) opposed it, claiming it would “scapegoat immigrants.”
That’s partisan blather: Police estimate that as many as 75% of those arrested for assault and robbery in Midtown Manhattan — Nadler’s district — are recently arrived migrants.
On Saturday, Trump pledged to “hunt down and capture every single gang member . . . that is being illegally harbored.”
A tall order, but the place to start is allowing local police to cooperate with ICE.
That means sanctuary laws must be overturned nationwide.
Trump tried to make that happen by executive order in 2017, when he cut federal funding for sanctuary jurisdictions.
But the order was hit with a slew of legal challenges from blue-state politicians — and courts including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only Congress, not the president, can impose terms on how federal money is spent.
If Trump wins in November, he plans to maneuver around those legal roadblocks by asking Congress to pass a law like the one Nadler is railing against.
The upcoming elections — for president and for the House and Senate — will determine whether that strategy can succeed.
One thing is certain: If Kamala wins, so do the gangs.
As Border Czar she let them in, and as president she’d shield them from deportation.
Under a Harris presidency, plan to bolt your doors and keep up your guard as you walk around your neighborhood — until it’s no longer walkable at all.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
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