ICE Slams a New York County for Releasing Illegal Alien Charged with Manslaughter
Three years into President Donald Trump’s time in office, liberal communities are still thumbing their noses at federal immigration law — and endangering their own citizens in the process.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is blasting Westchester County, New York, after an illegal alien charged with manslaughter was released from custody despite two detainer requests by the federal agency.
The fact that the illegal alien had reportedly been ordered deported twice before allegedly taking part in killing another man in a parking lot assault apparently meant nothing.
“When law enforcement agencies decide to not honor ICE detainers and release violent criminals back onto the streets, they are putting their city at serious risk,” ICE New York Field Office Director Thomas Decker said in a news release published Monday.
“We want nothing more than to cooperate and work together with local law enforcement authorities in order to protect our communities and keep this nation secure.”
That might seem like a pretty straightforward goal, but it’s obviously not one that liberal communities share.
According to the ICE news release, the illegal alien was identified as 32-year-old Feliciano Perez-Bautista, a Mexican national.
He is now being held in federal custody after being arrested by ICE, the release stated.
The news release stated that Perez-Bautista had been “removed” by ICE twice already in May 2013 and September 2014.
It wasn’t clear whether he’d actually been deported, or how he might have returned, but he was in the country on July 8 when he and another man were arrested on a charge of first-degree assault in Yonkers, New York.
According to The Journal News, which covers Westchester County, the assault charge was upgraded to manslaughter after the victim died.
So, a man who’d already been ordered out of the country twice was somehow still present to allegedly take part in the beating death of another man.
ICE put in a detainer request for Perez-Bautista with the Yonkers Police Department on July 12, the ICE release stated. It put in a request with the Westchester County Department of Corrections on July 30, the release stated.
Neither request was honored, and Perez-Bautista was eventually freed, as The Daily Caller reported.
The ICE news release attributed the local officials’ actions to the Westchester County Immigrant Protection Act.
That act, passed in 2018, limited local law enforcement cooperation with federal authorities, according to a Westfaironline report from March 2018.
In the ICE release, Decker blamed local, liberal political policies for hindering the administration of justice.
“Unfortunately, more and more we are seeing politicians place their own political agenda above the safety of the citizens in which they serve,” he said in the statement.
“This leaves local law enforcement agencies handcuffed by these reckless policies which give them no choice but to release criminals, like this unlawfully present Mexican national charged with manslaughter, back onto the streets to further terrorize the community.”
According to The Daily Caller, the Westchester policy is similar to that of New York City. But officials in the Empire State aren’t alone in endangering their communities by defying federal immigration laws.
Officials in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Oregon — among others — have all been in the news lately for allowing dangerous criminal suspects to go free — and proving the lengths they’re willing to go to be part of the anti-Trump #Resistance.
Local government is a bedrock belief of the American system — the Founders believed that government power should be vested as closely to the people as possible.
The country’s history has proven how sound that belief is. But officials who use that power to deliberately endanger their own citizens to make a political point betray that faith.
One of these days, hopefully, even liberal communities – like Democrat-dominated Westchester County – are going to realize that.
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