In more than 200 sanctuary city, county, and state jurisdictions across the United States, illegal aliens gather where they know they will be protected by local government authorities from deportation, no matter what crime they may commit. They hide in plain sight in any neighborhood: in pockets of ethnic communities among legal, law-abiding immigrants, and in upscale areas if they are working in the lucrative trafficking industrial complex.
A 40-year-old citizen of El Salvador was arrested after he sexually abused a child in Washington, D.C. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) learned of the crime while he was in custody and launched a detainer, which tells city officials to notify ICE when he is released and transfer custody to ICE.
The detainer was ignored. The Salvadoran was released back into the D.C. community without telling ICE, and he reoffended, ICE Washington, D.C. Field Office Director Russell Hott told The Federalist.
“The D.C. government has, based on that law, prohibited city employees from sharing information on somebody who is arrested,” Hott said. “They do not honor detainers, so they would ultimately release those individuals without notification to the agency, and they certainly have restrictions from city employees participating or helping facilitate in any way, and ultimately this just results in terrible conditions for public safety.”
The sanctuary laws in D.C. restrict every city government entity from working with or sharing information with ICE.
A 46-year-old noncitizen woman was arrested for murder. Again, the city ignored the ICE detainer and released her back to the street.
“It’s gut wrenching for us to see those things happen,” Hott said. “I just don’t understand the community that puts the predator over the victim.”
Former Mayor Vincent Gray issued a sanctuary order in 2011. In 2020, under Mayor Muriel Bowser, the city council strengthened the city’s sanctuary resolve with the Sanctuary Values Amendment Act of 2020, which requires a “prohibition on cooperation with federal immigration agencies,” and instructions to release noncitizens from the correctional facility within five hours after a release order is issued.
Hott has many disturbing stories of criminals that ICE could remove from the country but are instead released into the warm embrace of their sanctuary jurisdiction to, predictably, destroy the lives of more victims. Like the creep from Honduras, 38, previously deported from the U.S. with prior convictions for simple assault, theft, unlawful entry, and sexual abuse. Metro D.C. police arrested him for unlawful entry into a building. ICE launched a detainer, but police just released him back to the streets of D.C. where a few months later, they rearrested him for sex abuse. ICE tried for another detainer, but police again released him.
ICE used its Fugitive Operations Team to find and rearrest him, but this is more expensive and dangerous.
“The risk that comes along with those at-large operations is that folks now have access to weapons in their residence. They know the neighborhood, they know where to hide. They know how to manipulate certain situations. It is definitely a big, unknown risk factor for our folks going in and serving that warrant,” Hott said. “Non cooperative jurisdictions waste taxpayer dollars and government resources because ICE is forced to send eight to 10 law enforcement officers to find and arrest a single individual.”
Sanctuary Near You
This is not just a big city problem. There are 13 sanctuary states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North, Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. There are many counties and towns, like Quantico, Virginia; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Louisville, Kentucky.; and Lansing, Michigan.
At Northampton County Prison in Pennsylvania, ICE has to “stake out,” the prison, watching and waiting to see when an illegal alien would be released, said U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., speaking on the House floor in February.
One man they waited for was picked up by U.S. Border Patrol near Brownsville, Texas, in 2023 for illegally entering the U.S. He was given notice to appear before an immigration judge. But five months later he was arrested in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and charged with indecent assault against a minor.
“In cases where individuals have entered our country illegally, then broken an additional law, the public has a right to expect that our local officials will cooperate fully with the federal authorities,” Mackenzie said. But Northampton County decided in 2020 it would not honor detainers and instead require ICE to obtain an arrest warrant within 48 hours of an illegal alien’s release from prison, to provide “the basic protections of due process that all human beings are owed in the United States,” County Executive Lamont McClure said at the time.
Cut Federal Funds
President Donald Trump offered a warning to sanctuary jurisdictions in an executive order on his first day in office. It advised the Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, “to ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to federal funds.” Trump also advised them to undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on interfering with the enforcement of Federal law.
On Bondi’s first day in office, Feb. 2, she issued a directive to end funding to state and local sanctuary jurisdictions that interfere with federal law enforcement operations.
The Department of Justice promptly sued New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Mark Schroeder, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. DOJ also brought the state of Illinois and city of Chicago to court for immigration interference.
Chicago is a “Welcoming City,” offering “New Arrival” shelter through its Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights. The office offers a resource guide for new arrivals, available in Spanish, French, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese. The 20-page guide advises readers how to receive a host of public benefits, including healthcare, food, cash assistance, a driver’s license, education, and LGBTQ resources.
“What really frustrates me is to look at this from the standpoint that if we were any other federal law enforcement agency asking another law enforcement agency for support, it is given unequivocally,” Hott said. “This is a situation where folks don’t agree with the laws that Congress has passed and elect to just not pay attention to them.”
“We go out of our way to rescue victims of trafficking situations from the traffickers. We rescue children from child exploitation situations,” Hott said. “What I hear more from the folks that we rescue is that the individuals in the [illegal] migrant community prey on the other migrant community members.”
As we watch the immigration tug-of-war play out between the Trump Administration and sanctuary jurisdictions, it’s important to remember that illegal immigration was a top issue in the 2024 election. Americans support Trump’s policies.
Somewhere, a victim of crime committed by an illegal alien is crying: a child who didn’t ask to be raped, a parent who didn’t ask for their child to murdered. They didn’t choose life-altering crime victimization.
Perhaps somewhere else a family is crying because a member is being deported. The difference is, that person had a choice: to enter the U.S. through legal means, to not commit crime, or to stay home and try to make their home country better.
U.S. taxpayers have been overly generous. Illegal aliens deserve no sympathy for being sent home after breaking more laws. Shame on elected officials who protect them.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
