Weak cooperation with ICE leads to preventable crimes including homicides and thousands of sexual assaults

In March, a  24-year-old illegal alien killed a 59-year-old San Jose, CA woman in her home.  He was an admitted gang member who police say had been arrested numerous times.

Police Chief Eddie Garcia said in a News Conference that the suspect, Arevalo Carranza, was arrested and released in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties at least six times, and was most recently arrested on suspicion of possessing methamphetamine and paraphernalia in January.

He is currently on probation for the charges, and Garcia said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had placed him under a detainer order that would allow him to be held in jail until federal authorities arrive. The order was repeatedly ignored by Santa Clara County due to its sanctuary policies.

San Jose police do not request immigration status when making an arrest or report or arrest undocumented immigrants living in the city, but Garcia said ignoring detainers and releasing inmates from custody who have committed serious crimes undermines the city’s safety.

“This isn’t about politics, this is about public safety,” Garcia said, adding that documented and undocumented immigrants should have no reason to fear police in the city. “He could have been turned over six times.”

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo called Larson’s death a “devastating tragedy” and doubled down on Garcia’s statements, calling for a change in the county’s policy that would benefit all residents, especially immigrants who are most often targeted by felons who should be deported.

Sheriff Laurie Smith released a statement following the news conference siding with the city’s position.

“This is a senseless act, and very well may have been preventable,” Smith said. “Carlos Arevalo-Carranza is a violent predator who should have remained in custody until officials with ICE had the appropriate time to evaluate his immigration status.”

She said she has long stood by a system of honoring ICE holds, and would advocate to change this county policy.

How ICE is notified

While it is true that ICE agents do see arrests entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), they often miss first-time alien offenders, especially if they evaded Border Patrol at the border and slipped into the country without an encounter. With their fingerprints not on record, ICE has no way of knowing who they are.

Furthermore, criminal aliens are often coached to give false identities. If their fingerprints are already on record, ICE will be pinged and will try to reconcile the differences between the prints and the name, but if their fingerprints were never on record, the only way for ICE to know about the arrest if the locality is not proactive, is if an ICE official was posted at the jail at that time.

As one ICE official stated, “Biometric information uploaded through NCIC is only as good as the data that accompanies it, and given the reality that persons may provide incorrect name and/or citizenship information to local jurisdictions upon arrest, it’s not uncommon for persons to elude detection in jurisdictions that restrict ICE’s access to interview persons in local criminal custody.” While sanctuary jurisdictions are particularly bad, the ICE official noted, without having the particular information on this case, that even other jurisdictions that apprehend aliens “who may only briefly be in local custody and are released prior to an ICE officer being able to interview them” can slip through the cracks.

Many major cities, in particular, will not actively notify ICE about what they consider to be “low-level crimes.” This is how so many illegal alien crimes go undocumented.

What happens when local Law Enforcement is not proactive?

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), between June 1, 2011, and March 31, 2019, 189,000 illegal aliens were charged with more than 303,000 criminal offenses. That might sound like a lot, but in reality the true number of illegal aliens arrested for crimes in Texas is likely exponentially higher, because DPS only counts those whose fingerprints have a positive ID from DHS. Easily fewer than half of the criminal aliens encountered by Texas law enforcement have previously been in DHS custody, especially those caught for a first crime. Anyone who successfully evades capture at the border is not in the federal system, and the criminal elements tend to evade detection more often because they obviously don’t surrender at the border like the family units do.

According to Texas DPS, “These figures only count individuals who previously had an encounter with DHS that resulted in their fingerprints being entered into the DHS IDENT database. Foreign nationals who enter the country illegally and avoid detection by DHS, but are later arrested by local or state law enforcement for a state offense will not have a DHS response in regard to their lawful status and do not appear in these counts.”

All those who evaded capture and went on to commit their first crimes are not documented in the report, and often they are released to commit even more crimes before ICE even knows about it.

Even among those who are known, they have collectively racked up “arrests for 549 homicide charges; 33,449 assault charges; 5,836 burglary charges; 38,185 drug charges; 420 kidnapping charges; 16,229 theft charges; 24,126 obstructing police charges; 1,698 robbery charges; 3,570 sexual assault charges; 4,777 sexual offense charges; and 3,049 weapon charges.”

Over 8000 sexually related offenses and more than 500 murders that could have potentially been prevented by closing the border – and that is just in a single state!