enforcement

When student organizers invited Jessica Vaughan to speak at Lewis & Clark College's International Affairs Symposium, they knew there would be pushback.

The policy director for the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies, recently designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, repeatedly told the audience gathered inside the Agnes Flanagan Chapel that she's not against refugees seeking asylum in the U.S.

"Then how can you explain your Twitter feed?" a professor asked during the Q&A section of the panel discussion Vaughan shared with Galya Ruffer, founding director of The Center of Forced Migration Studies at Northwestern University.

"I choose certain cases to share," Vaughan explained...

(She does, it should be noted, also share stories from outlets such as CBS News and The Daily Beast that may be seen as detrimental to the White House's arguments for its stance on immigration and refugee issues.)

The discussion was at times difficult to hear as a protest, organized by Portland's Resistance...20 demonstrators chanted, at times employing the siren feature of a bullhorn...

The protest was organized on Monday after history professor Elliott Young...

Catherine Kodat, dean of Lewis & Clark's College of Arts and Sciences, said student organizers began preparing for the possibility of a protest after the post began to spread...

On at least two occasions, a pair of doors near the stage shook as someone outside pounded on them. A shout of "Nazi scum" could be heard between the sound of boots on wood...

Vaughan's critics Tuesday evening contended that those "certain cases" paint immigrants and refugees in broad strokes, stoking racism against both groups.

"I don't think immigration has anything to do with crime. At all," she said.

The back-and-forth on crime among refugee and immigrant populations was a departure from the debate...

The discussion, moderated by associate professor Heather Smith-Cannoy, was supposed to center around the question of whether countries were obligated to offer refugees asylum within their borders or help them re-settle within their country of origin.

At the outset of the debate, Ruffer thanked the student organizers for their decision to not create a "safe space" but rather promote conversation.

Yet all but three questions from debate attendees were directed at Vaughan, criticizing her previously published works.

Smith-Cannoy may have drawn the loudest applause of the evening when she challenged Vaughan's previous assertions that the Obama Administration released 36,000 undocumented immigrants from detention in 2013 and that 72 individuals from countries listed in President Trump's original executive order had been linked to terrorist activity.

(Both claims had been debunked by The Washington Post and other fact-checking agencies.)

Vaughan pushed back, telling the crowd that her research was open-sourced.

And so it went, until professor Bob Mandel approached the stage to signal the end of the discussion....

Gregory McKelvey, leader of Portland's Resistance, was among those standing outside...

"The people here are intelligent people," McKelvey said. "It doesn't take much for them to argue effectively against people who use made-up facts to make their points." Read more about Lewis & Clark students, faculty push back against controversial speaker as protest continues

Attorney General Jeff Sessions today spoke to Customs and Border Protection personnel at the United States-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona.

In his remarks, the Attorney General announced that he has issued the attached memo to United States Attorneys that mandates the prioritization of criminal immigration enforcement. The memo directs federal prosecutors to focus on particular offenses that, if aggressively charged and prosecuted, can help prevent and deter illegal immigration.

Additionally, the Attorney General revealed that the Department of Justice will add 50 more immigration judges to the bench this year and 75 next year. He also highlighted the Department's plan to streamline its hiring of judges, reflecting the dire need to reduce the backlogs in our immigration courts.

Please find below the full remarks from Attorney General Sessions.

* * *

Remarks Prepared for Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Meeting with Customs and Border Protection Personnel and Immigration Policy Announcement

NOGALES, ARIZONA

Good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection, who not only served as our gracious hosts today, but who put themselves in harm’s way each day to secure our borders and protect us.

Here, along our nation’s southwest border, is ground zero in this fight. Here, under the Arizona sun, ranchers work the land to make an honest living, and law-abiding citizens seek to provide for their families.

But it is also here, along this border, that transnational gangs like MS-13 and international cartels flood our country with drugs and leave death and violence in their wake. And it is here that criminal aliens and the coyotes and the document-forgers seek to overthrow our system of lawful immigration.

Let’s stop here for a minute. When we talk about MS-13 and the cartels, what do we mean? We mean criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens and who profit by smuggling poison and other human beings across our borders. Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings.

It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.

In this fight, I am here to tell you, the brave men and women of Customs and Border Protection: we hear you and we have your back. Under the President’s leadership and through his Executive Orders, we will secure this border and bring the full weight of both the immigration courts and federal criminal enforcement to combat this attack on our national security and sovereignty.

The President has made this a priority — and already we are seeing the results. From January to February of this year, illegal crossings dropped by 40 percent, which was unprecedented. Then, last month, we saw a 72 percent drop compared to the month before the President was inaugurated. That’s the lowest monthly figure for at least 17 years.

This is no accident. This is what happens when you have a President who understands the threat, who is not afraid to publically identify the threat and stand up to it, and who makes clear to law enforcement that the leadership of their country finally has their back. Together, we will drastically reduce the danger posed by criminal aliens, gang members and cartel henchmen.

To that end, the President and I want to do our best to arm you, and the prosecutors who partner with you, with more tools in your fight against criminal aliens. So today, I am pleased to stand here with you and announce new guidance regarding our commitment to criminal immigration enforcement. As we speak, I am issuing a document to all federal prosecutors that mandates the prioritization of such enforcement.

Starting today, federal prosecutors are now required to consider for prosecution all of the following offenses:

• The transportation or harboring of aliens. As you know too well, this is a booming business down here. No more. We are going to shut down and jail those who have been profiting off this lawlessness — people smuggling gang members across the border, helping convicted criminals re-enter this country and preying on those who don’t know how dangerous the journey can be.
• Further, where an alien has unlawfully entered the country, which is a misdemeanor, that alien will now be charged with a felony if they unlawfully enter or attempt enter a second time and certain aggravating circumstances are present.
• Also, aliens that illegally re-enter the country after prior removal will be referred for felony prosecution — and a priority will be given to such offenses, especially where indicators of gang affiliation, a risk to public safety or criminal history are present.
• Fourth: where possible, prosecutors are directed to charge criminal aliens with document fraud and aggravated identity theft — the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly: I have directed that all 94 U.S. Attorneys Offices make the prosecution of assault on a federal law enforcement officer — that’s all of you — a top priority. If someone dares to assault one of our folks in the line of duty, they will do federal time for it.

To ensure that these priorities are implemented, starting today, each U.S. Attorney’s Office, whether on the border or interior, will designate an Assistant United States Attorney as the Border Security Coordinator for their District. It will be this experienced prosecutor’s job to coordinate the criminal immigration enforcement response for their respective offices.

For those that continue to seek improper and illegal entry into this country, be forewarned: This is a new era. This is the Trump era. The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our immigration laws and the catch and release practices of old are over.

In that vein, I am also pleased to announce a series of reforms regarding immigration judges to reduce the significant backlogs in our immigration courts.

Pursuant to the President’s executive order, we will now be detaining all adults who are apprehended at the border. To support this mission, we have already surged 25 immigration judges to detention centers along the border. I want to thank personally the judges who answered the call to help us with this new initiative.

In addition, we will put 50 more immigration judges on the bench this year and 75 next year. We can no longer afford to wait 18 to 24 months to get these new judges on the bench. So today, I have implemented a new, streamlined hiring plan. It requires just as much vetting as before, but reduces the timeline, reflecting the dire need to reduce the backlogs in our immigration courts.

With the President’s Executive Orders on Border Security, Transnational Criminal Organizations and Public Safety as our guideposts, we will execute a strategy that once again secures the border; apprehends and prosecutes those criminal aliens that threaten our public safety; takes the fight to gangs like MS-13 and Los Zetas; and makes dismantlement and destruction of the cartels a top priority. We will deploy a multifaceted approach in these efforts: we are going to interdict your drugs on the way in, your money on the way out and investigate and prosecute your trafficking networks to the fullest extent of the law.

Why are we doing this? Because it is what the duly enacted laws of the United States require. I took an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. How else can we look the parents and loved ones of Kate Steinle, Grant Ronnebeck and so many others in eye and say we are doing everything possible to prevent such tragedies from ever occurring again?

Let me finish where I started, by thanking you — the brave men and women in uniform who are at the front lines of this fight. I know we ask a tremendous amount from all of you, but know this: we have your back, and will do all we can to empower you and support you in your work.

God bless you and thank you. Read more about Attorney General Jeff Sessions Announces the Department of Justice’s Renewed Commitment to Criminal Immigration Enforcement

There are over 300 jurisdictions today that obstruct cooperation with federal immigration efforts, by enacting laws or policies prohibiting police agencies from honoring immigration detainers or providing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with the information needed to identify and apprehend alien criminals.

One of those sanctuaries is Multnomah County, Ore., in which an activist open-borders mentality apparently percolates through all three branches of government.

The county sheriff was recently interviewed after his office released a convicted sex offender rather than tender the alien to ICE on the detainer it had filed — a routine occurrence in that sheriff's office. The sheriff defended his decision by claiming the office couldn't afford to expend resources "toward immigration enforcement". I'm hard pressed to figure out exactly what resources are needed to simply hand an alien criminal over to ICE, or how the community's safety is better served by that choice.

But the sheriff's actions pale in comparison to those of Multnomah County judge Monica Herranz, who is "under internal investigation" after it's alleged that she helped an illegal alien escape from her courtroom rather than end up in the hands of waiting ICE agents. She apparently escorted him through back corridors available only to court employees and on to freedom. This happened in late February. ICE agents brought it to the attention of the U.S. Attorney's Office, whose chief, Billy Williams, an Obama administration appointee, apparently then simply took the complaint back to the Multnomah County judiciary for said "internal investigation" rather than do his job by convening a grand jury to begin the process of indicting and prosecuting Judge Herranz for harboring and shielding from detection an alien illegally in the United States — a federal felony (see 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii)).

It's been more than a month now and there is little reason to think that the matter is being handled in any way other than sweeping it under the rug. I'm presuming that Williams was one of those Obama holdovers whose resignation was recently requested by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (I hope so.) Perhaps it's time for someone under Sessions' leadership at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to revisit the patently obvious shuffling-off of this outrageous and prosecutable offense, and to direct the U.S. Attorney's Office to do its job.

But following on the heels of this judge's disgraceful and illegal conduct — assuming it to be true, and all indications are that it is — how has the judiciary generally reacted?

Rather than express outrage at the conduct, or speak in a measured way about the proper role of the judiciary, California's chief justice weighed in to blast renewed federal immigration enforcement efforts under the new administration, and called ICE presence at courthouses an assault against the rule of law.

Washington State's chief justice also got involved and wrote to John Kelly, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to urge him to direct ICE agents to stay away from courthouses by declaring them to be "sensitive locations".

Since then, both DOJ and DHS have rejected the suggestion that courthouses should be put off limits, and they're right to have done so. Think about the whole thing for a moment: officers of the law being told that courthouses, those bastions of the law, are out of bounds? How logical is that?

At any rate, judges need to accept the reality that ICE agents are at those courthouses because it is one of the few avenues available to them to take alien criminals into custody when it becomes evident that the police or sheriff's office refuse to cooperate. It would be in everyone's best interest that custody transfers take place in a secure location like a county jail — but when that opportunity is by denied to them by foolish and misplaced sanctuary policies, ICE agents go where they must to do their jobs.

Of course, following the declination of DHS and DOJ to pursue such a course, along comes a member of Congress to file a bill attempting to force the matter through enactment of a law. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, from Oregon (no surprise), has joined with several other Democratic colleagues to introduce the "Protecting Sensitive Locations Act".

This is typical. If Democrats had their way, they would simply legislate away the ability of ICE agents to do their jobs by making the "sensitive locations" list so large and cumbersome that nothing would be left.

It's already been made hard enough in the past eight years through a horrendous admixture of former White House policy, and activist judicial decisions:

Worksites? Nope, pretty much off the table. Why actually do enforcement operations to remove aliens working illegally at various employer sites? Just make the pretense through occasional paperwork audits.

Homes? Heaven forbid! What kind of country is this, you jackbooted minions of the law?

Colleges or universities? How dare you intrude on this sacred institution of learning? Our students need their safe spaces.

Jails, prisons, sheriff's offices, or police booking stations? Absolutely not. How dare you try to "commandeer" our resources by asking for information or trying to take custody of an alien on our premises?

You get the idea.

But to go back to the matter of the judiciary: When asked during his confirmation hearings, newly invested Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was asked about tweets from the president lambasting the judiciary, which he dutifully lamented in his gentlemanly way, saying among other things, "I find that disheartening and I find that demoralizing."

My own take is that the current atmosphere of disrespect for the judiciary — by the public as well as the president — is in large measure a self-inflicted wound.

The question in many minds is: Why, exactly, do we support an institution, at least at the federal level, in which individuals are given lifetime sinecures for jobs in which they themselves are the only ones who hold the power to decide the limit of their power? This leads ultimately to an unbridled lack of restraint and the inevitable taint of politicization into the third branch of government, the only one of the three intended specifically to avoid that taint.

Perhaps it is time we in America undertook a reformation to see them systemically defrocked of such unlimited lifetime power. After all, the only members of the federal judiciary for whom this appears to be a constitutional requirement (and the language even there is not straightforward) are members of the Supreme Court. Legislative change would suffice for all of the rest.

I am not the first to make such a suggestion, nor to observe that lifetime appointments have not served to preclude politicization of the judiciary. If judges have come to see themselves as demigods, it is our own fault, for we have allowed them to invest themselves with those qualities. A judge who had to consider his future might be more prudent in the present.

  Read more about Courthouses as Sanctuaries?

On March 1, 2017 Oregon’s Multnomah County had 207 of the 974 foreign nationals (criminal aliens) incarcerated in the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) prison system; the county was second in foreign national crime in the state with 21.25 percent of the criminal aliens in DOC prisons.

The following table reveals how Multnomah County residents were harmed or victimized by the 207 criminal aliens incarcerated on March 1st in the DOC prison system with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detainers.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

This table reveals, using the DOC ICE detainer numbers from March 1st, the total number criminal alien inmates incarcerated in the DOC prison system by type of crime from all Oregon counties, the total number of criminal alien inmates from Multnomah County in DOC prisons by type of crime and the percentage of those alien inmates who were from the county by type of crime.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

The following table reveals the self-declared countries of origin of the majority of the 207 criminal aliens with ICE immigration detainers who have harmed or victimized the residents Multnomah County in the DOC prison system.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

Criminal aliens from 32 different countries have harmed or victimized the residents of Multnomah County.

David Olen Cross of Salem, Oregon writes on immigration issues and foreign national crime. This report is a service to state, county and city governmental officials in Multnomah County to help them assess the impact of foreign national crime in the county. He can be reached at docfnc@yahoo.com or at http://docfnc.wordpress.com/

https://docfnc.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/oregons-multnomah-county-second-in-foreign-national-crime-in-march-2017/ Read more about Oregon’s Multnomah County Second in Foreign National Crime in March 2017

On March 1, 2017 Oregon’s Washington County had 189 of the 974 foreign nationals (criminal aliens) incarcerated in the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) prison system; the county was third in foreign national crime in the state with 19.40 percent of the criminal aliens in DOC prisons.

The following table reveals how Washington County residents were harmed or victimized by the 189 criminal aliens incarcerated on March 1st in the DOC prison system with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detainers.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

This table reveals, using the DOC ICE detainer numbers from March 1st, the total number of criminal alien inmates incarcerated in the DOC prison system by type of crime from all Oregon counties, the total number of criminal alien inmates from Washington County in DOC prisons by type of crime and the percentage of those alien inmates who were from the county by type of crime.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

The following table reveals the self-declared countries of origin of the majority of the 189 criminal aliens with ICE immigration detainers who have harmed or victimized the residents Washington County in the DOC prison system.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

Criminal aliens from 23 different countries have harmed or victimized the residents of Washington County.

David Olen Cross of Salem, Oregon writes on immigration issues and foreign national crime. This report is a service to state, county and city governmental officials in Washington County to help them assess the impact of foreign national crime in the county. He can be reached at docfnc@yahoo.com or at http://docfnc.wordpress.com/

https://docfnc.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/oregons-washington-county-third-in-foreign-national-crime-in-march-2017/ Read more about Oregon’s Washington County Third in Foreign National Crime in March 2017

The Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) March 1, 2017 Inmate Population Profile indicated there were 14,654inmates incarcerated in the DOC’s 14 prisons.

Data obtained from the DOC indicated that on March 1st there were 974 foreign nationals (criminal aliens) incarcerated in the state’s prison system; almost one in every fifteen prisoners incarcerated by the state was a criminal alien, 6.65 percent of the total prison population.

Some background information, all 974 criminal aliens currently incarcerated in the DOC prison system were identified by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal law enforcement agency that is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. If an inmate is identified by ICE as being a criminal alien, at the federal law enforcement agency’s request, DOC officials will place an “ICE detainer” on the inmate. After the inmate completes his/her state sanction, prison officials will transfer custody of the inmate to ICE.

Using DOC Inmate Population Profiles and ICE detainer numbers, the following table reveals the total number inmates, the number of domestic and criminal alien inmates along with the percentage of them with ICE detainers incarcerated on March 1st in the state’s prisons.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17 and Inmate Population Profile 01 March 17.

Using DOC ICE detainer numbers, the following table reveals the number and percentage of criminal alien prisoners incarcerated on March 1st that were sent to prison from the state’s 36 counties.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

Here are the ways Oregon residents were victimized by the 974 criminal aliens.

Using DOC ICE detainer numbers, the following table reveals the number and percentage of criminal alien prisoners incarcerated on March 1st by type of crime.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

Using the DOC Inmate Population Profile and ICE detainer numbers from March 1st, the following table reveals the total number inmates by crime type, the number of domestic and criminal alien prisoners incarcerated by type of crime and the percentage of those crimes committed by criminal aliens.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17 and Inmate Population Profile 01 March 17.

Using DOC ICE detainer numbers, the following table reveals the self-declared countries of origin of the 974 criminal alien prisoners by number and percentage incarcerated on March 1st in the state’s prisons.
 

Source: Research and Evaluation DOC Report ICE inmates list 01 March 17.

Beyond the DOC criminal alien incarceration numbers and incarceration percentages, per county and per crime type, or even country of origin, criminal aliens pose high economic cost on Oregonians.

An individual prisoner incarcerated in the DOC prison system costs the state approximately ($94.55) per day.

The DOC’s incarceration cost for its 974 criminal alien prison population is approximately ($92,091.70) per day, ($644,641.90) per week, and ($33,613,470.50) per year.

Even taking into account fiscal year 2016 U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) award of $1,788,075.00, if the State of Oregon receives the same amount of SCAAP funding for fiscal year 2017, the cost to incarcerate 974 criminal aliens to the DOC will be at least ($31,825,395.50).

None of preceding cost estimates for the DOC to incarcerate the 974 criminal aliens includes the dollar amount for legal services (indigent defense), language interpreters, court costs, or victim assistance.

Bibliography

Oregon Department of Corrections Population Profile March 1, 2017:
http://www.oregon.gov/doc/RESRCH/docs/inmate_profile_201703.pdf

Oregon Department of Corrections Population Profile (unpublished MS Excel workbook) titled Incarcerated Criminal Aliens Report dated March 1, 2017.

Oregon Department of Corrections Issue Brief Quick Facts IB-53, January, 2017:
http://www.oregon.gov/doc/OC/docs/pdf/IB-53-Quick%20Facts.pdf

U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), 2016 SCAAP award: https://www.bja.gov/funding/FY2016-SCAAP-Award-C.PDF

This report is a service to Oregon state, county and city governmental officials to help them assess the impact of foreign national crime in the state. Read more about Oregon Department of Corrections: Criminal Alien Report March 2017

Oregonians for Immigration Reform, an organization that calls for an end to illegal immigration, will host the Center for Immigration Studies policy director in its general membership meeting this Saturday.

Jessica Vaughan will discuss sanctuary policies that are being developed in the face of President Donald Trump's immigration orders, and the implications of those orders, which has included targeted deportations of undocumented immigrants in Oregon.

Vaughan's speaking engagement comes a little over a month after the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the Center for Immigration Studies as a hate group, specifically labeling it as anti-immigrant. The law center said the group was dubbed a hate group because it shares content by "white nationalists, Holocaust deniers and material from explicitly racist websites."

Cynthia Kendoll, president of OFIR, said the designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center "means nothing to me. I think that any time a group is being successful and is making good points and providing education, they’re designated as a hate group.

"I think SPLC has gone off the rails."

Kendoll, who met Vaughan while attending a tour of the United States-Mexico border as part of the El Paso National Sheriff's Border School, said the hate group designation proves CIS is doing useful work and should be considered a "badge of honor."

Some local civil rights organizations, however, said Vaughan's attendance merely adds fuel to the testy political climate in Oregon.

"It's particularly troubling because we see a rise in hate crimes here in Oregon with the hateful rhetoric that they and Trump have publicly stated," said Andrea Williams, executive director of immigrant rights organization Causa Oregon.

Kendoll said OFIR is commonly referred to as an anti-immigrant group as well, but said that moniker doesn't describe the organization's values and objectives.

Instead, Kendoll said, OFIR is concerned about the consequences of legal and illegal immigration. OFIR's focus has shifted from its initial focus of "unfettered, unchecked" immigration and its impact on issues like traffic, urban sprawl and water usage, and expanded its scope to include impacts on issues like crime, school overcrowding and use of entitlement programs.

She said OFIR is nonpartisan its goal to explore immigration's impacts, and it invites speakers of different backgrounds to speak at membership meetings.

"We're not policy setters. All we're doing is simply giving people the opportunity to learn about what's going on," Kendoll said.

One of OFIR's more high-profile guests, Kendoll said, was former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio was the keynote speaker at a rally on the Oregon State Capitol steps in 2015 and discussed immigration, gun laws and crime policy. He was accused of violating Latino civil rights in a racial-profiling lawsuit in 2013 for pulling over Latinos over suspicion of being undocumented. The Department of Justice subsequently filed a criminal contempt of court charge against Arpaio for continuing to detain suspected undocumented immigrants without probable cause.

Williams said OFIR's history of giving people like Arpaio and Vaughan a platform invites the community to spread negativity amongst its undocumented immigrant neighbors.

But Kendoll said Vaughan's visit is merely showcasing her decades-long work examining the impact of immigration in the United States.

If you go

Who: Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies

What: Oregonians for Immigration Reform's General Membership meeting

When: Saturday, April 8, 2017 at 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Best Western Mill Creek Inn at 3125 Ryan Drive SE, Salem

The event is free. Guests will be asked to sign in upon arriving. Read more about OFIR to host CIS policy director on heels of hate group designation

The sheriff of Oregon’s most populous sanctuary county said he cannot help federal immigration officials because of state law. His office released a Mexican criminal alien convicted of sexual assault despite a hold from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese told Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson that Oregon law prohibits his providing assistance to enforcing federal law during an interview conducted by Lisa Fletcher that will air on Sunday morning. “The state law is a very clear guideline for local law enforcement and sheriff’s statewide,” Reese explained. “We can’t expend county resources or personnel towards immigration enforcement.”

Fletcher countered that one state legislator is “furious about this.”

“He says you’re not abiding by the law by not detaining some of these illegal immigrants who are held on very, fairly serious charges or who have committed fairly serious crimes, are a risk to the community,” she stated. “How do you respond to him?”

The sheriff danced around the question, stating they hold people in their jails who “are accused of crimes in our communities.” He says he hold criminals until a judge says otherwise. Sheriff Reese said by not acting as immigration agents he believes the country is better off. “It simply worries me that we’ve spent so much time and energy building community trust and something outside of our control may damage that.”

Crime victims might feel otherwise. A report issued on Thursday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials revealed that Sheriff Reese’s jail released a Mexican national on February 15. Immigration officials issued an immigration detainer on March 21, 2016. The report indicates the Mexican criminal alien has a prior conviction for sexual assault.

The Declined Detainer Outcome Report for the week of January 28-February 3 revealed the release by the sheriff’s office of another Mexican national convicted of assault and a Tongan national convicted of amphetamine possession.

Full Measure also presented an interview with immigration fugitive Francisco Aguirre, calling him the “poster child” for the sanctuary city of Portland. Aguirre, a Salvadoran national who fled to the U.S. as a teen. Oregon convicted the Salvadoran in 2014 for driving under the influence. Fletcher said he managed to avoid spending any time in jail for the crime, but it put him on the radar of ICE Enforcement Removal Operations officers.

“A month later ICE knock on my door… tried to take me in custody. I let them know clearly that they wasn’t [sic] welcome there, and they must leave the property because it was private property,” Aguirre said defiantly. After the ICE officers left, Aguirre fled to Augustana Lutheran Church where he held up in a sanctuary for 81 days.

Aguirre believes that despite entering the country illegally and committing another crime, he has earned the right to remain in the U.S.

“You’re here illegally; you committed a crime, a crime that very well could have killed somebody,” Fletcher stated. “Why do you deserve to stay in this country?”

“I understand that I commit a crime by getting a DUI. But, we all, as a human being, make mistakes, and we always deserve a second chance,” Aguirre said, rationalizing his prior actions. “I been contribute [sic] to the economy of this country. I been paying my taxes, since I been living in this country. I’m willing to help my community whenever they need.”

Aguirre remains safe under Sheriff Reese’s and the other elected officials of Portland’s sanctuary city protections. Or, maybe not. Late in March, ICE ERO officers carried out a targeted enforcement operation in three Pacific Northwest states, including Oregon. During that operation. Officers arrested more than 80 criminals aliens — 19 of those included aliens with DUI convictions.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. Read more about SHERIFF: GIVING SEX OFFENDERS TO ICE DAMAGES ‘COMMUNITY TRUST’

On February 1, 2017 Oregon’s Marion County had 234 of the 967 foreign nationals (criminal aliens) incarcerated in the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) prison system; the county was first in foreign national crime in the state with 24.20 percent of the criminal aliens in DOC prisons.

  Read more about Oregon’s Marion County First in Foreign National Crime in February 2017