by WorldTribune Staff, December 1, 2024 Real World News
A large number of America’s sheriffs see President-elect Donald Trump’s victory as a mandate to get tough on illegal immigration.
“Many conservative sheriffs across the U.S., from Texas to California to redder swaths of the northeast, now stand ready to be force multipliers for ICE and its 6,000 agents,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 28.
Tom Homan / C-SPANChuck Jenkins, the longtime Republican sheriff in Maryland’s Frederick County, where voters went for Democrats in the last two presidential elections, said he is willing support Trump’s immigration policies “100%.”
“I want to do more, within the law,” the Journal cited Jenkins as saying.
Soon upon taking office, Trump’s team plans to expand a federal program that gives sheriffs and other agencies certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) powers.
The long-dormant program until 2012 allowed officers from participating local agencies, during their routine duties, to question and arrest suspected noncitizens in the community on immigration violations.
Tom Homan, the administration’s incoming border czar, said the program could act as a deterrent as it leads to more frequent and visible arrests.
Under one plan being proposed, local law-enforcement agencies that turn immigrants over to ICE would get funding from the Trump administration that under the Biden-Harris regime is used to reimburse nonprofits and cities which assist newly arrived migrants at the border.
Asked if he supports mass deportation, GOP Sheriff Richard Jones of Butler County, Ohio, replied: “Sure, I do. And so do the American people…. People are tired of this.”
Jones, who spoke at a Trump rally, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that during the Biden administration “everything shut down” when it came to immigration enforcement.
Now, Jones said, “We’re going to be in the business again.” He is gearing up to resume housing ICE detainees and estimates he could hold up to 150 today. “We have space available, and they’re going to need space from day one.”
“State and local cooperation is absolutely essential to detain and deport illegal immigrants on a historic scale,” said RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, which advocates for tougher enforcement tactics.
During his first term, Trump granted a pardon to Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who built a national reputation as an immigration hard-liner before he was convicted of disobeying a court order to halt the raids that brought him fame.
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Law enforcement in “sanctuary cities” is a different story.
The sheriff for Los Angeles County has said that, under a newly-passed “sanctuary city” ordinance, his officers won’t ask citizens about their immigration status.
In Massachusetts, Bristol County’s sheriff publicly said he would reply “not interested” if ICE asked him to hold undocumented immigrants with a criminal history at a former federal detention facility in his county.
Sheriffs in some blue states legally can’t cooperate with ICE, while those in some red states must, said Jonathan Thompson, the executive director of the nonpartisan National Sheriffs’ Association, whose members include about 70% of the country’s 3,081 sheriffs. In North Carolina, for instance, Republican lawmakers last week overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill that would require sheriffs to work with ICE on certain detentions. In Oregon, by contrast, local and state agencies can’t comply with federal immigration requests absent a judicial subpoena.
Several Democrat mayors have also vowed not to comply with Trump’s mass deportations policy.
Those close to Homan told the Washington Free Beacon that the Trump White House is prepared to use all tools at its disposal to force them to cooperate with—or at least not obstruct—its mass deportation agenda.
Those tools include prosecutions under at least two provisions in the federal code. Federal law prohibits an individual from knowingly harboring any illegal aliens from law enforcement.
It’s also a felony to hinder any law enforcement investigation—a charge Homan is likely to call for should any local or state leader attempt to slow down deportations. Democrats, those close to Homan said, need to weigh whether any political stunts are worth the severe criminal penalties.
The Trump administration is expected to work with the Department of Justice to bring felony charges against those who actively block any ICE deportations.
Denver Democrat Mayor Mike Johnston said he is willing to put police officers at the county line to repel ICE agents, comparing Trump’s immigration plans to the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
“More than us having DPD stationed at the county line to keep them out, you would have 50,000 Denverites there,” Johnston told Denverite. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them.”
Johnston later walked back those comments, but still said he’s ready to go to jail for obstructing Trump’s immigration actions he thinks are “wrong.”
Homan said: “Me and the Denver mayor agree on one thing: He is willing to go to jail, and I am willing to put him there.”
On Friday’s broadcast of Hannity on Fox News, Homan stated that he is going to contract as much work around immigration that doesn’t require law enforcement officials as he can, and that way, “if these sanctuary states and cities keep pushing back, I’ll have the extra resources to double manpower in those sanctuary cities.”
Homan said: “[M]y plan is, and I’ve been very vocal about this, we’re going to contract as much work out as we can, work that doesn’t require a badge and a gun, because I need badges and guns on the street to do the deportation operation. So, when it comes to driving a bus, transportation, whether it’s ground or air, whether it’s processing, whether it’s other administrative duties, contract that work out, because right now, we’ve got badges and guns doing that work. Get them out of that administrative work, put more on the street, and that’s what we’re going to do. And if these sanctuary states and cities keep pushing back, I’ll have the extra resources to double manpower in those sanctuary cities. Because if we can’t arrest the bad guy in the jail with one agent, it means I’ve got to send a whole team out into the field to find this person, and, for officer safety reasons, we need a whole team, rather than just one person.”
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Local sheriffs seen playing key role in mass deportation plan; Homan warns sanctuary mayors added by Editor Two on December 1, 2024
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