PACIFIC NORTHWEST – Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in the Pacific Northwest are taking the unusual step of criticizing Washington state’s new sanctuary state law and giving detailed examples of the danger they believe it presents to the public, Fox News reported.
The office recently issued a press release, which lists seven cases in which ICE requested detainers on criminal illegal aliens being held in local jails and those requests were ignored. As a result, the law led to tragic consequences.
According to ICE, Rosalio Ramos-Ramos was arrested last January for murder and dismembering his victim. It happened just months after Ramos was released from a Washington jail despite ICE’s request for an immigration detainer and notification of his pending release, neither of which were honored.
ICE continued to make their case. They cited the criminal activity of Mexican national Martin Gallo-Gallardo. He was in a Clackamas County Oregon jail. The statement said jail officials ignored ICE’s request for an immigration detainer and notification of release. Hence, Gallardo was released and within months was re-arrested, this time for reportedly murdering his wife.
Moreover, the most recent case involves Francisco Carranza-Ramirez, who was also in the U.S. illegally. He was convicted of raping a wheelchair-bound Seattle woman twice. He was sentenced to time served and released, under the judge’s order that he self-deport back to Mexico. King County Sheriff’s officials say he eventually returned to Mexico, but not before assaulting his victim a third time.
Meantime, Washington State just passed what some immigration advocates are calling the strongest sanctuary state law in the country. It actually forbids local jails and state prisons from honoring ICE immigration detainers and even prevents corrections officials from even letting ICE know about the pending release of a criminal illegal immigrant. Imagine the hardship this places on employees watching these occurrences take place. Furthermore, the law instructs the attorney general to draft new rules restricting ICE agents from making immigration arrests at courthouses and hospitals.
In signing the law, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee reportedly said, “We will not be complicit in the Trump administration’s depraved efforts to break up hard-working immigrant and refugee families.”
Now, ICE’s Deputy Director of the Seattle Field Office, Bryan Wilcox, says the law is putting lives in jeopardy; and there is clear and convincing evidence to this truth.
“I think we’ve sort of hit a critical mass and this statute that the state passed is one step too far,” said Wilcox in an interview with Fox News.
