One of the biggest platforms that President Donald Trump ran on — in both election victories, as a matter of fact — was a promise to tighten up America’s borders and crack down on illegal immigration.
It was a rallying cry in his first term and a plan of action in his current term.
But it hasn’t been easy for the president.
In fact, it’s been anything but a smooth ride for Trump, as a number of deep blue cities and states began doing what they could to defy the president via “sanctuary” policies, which effectively gives the state carte blanche to ignore presidential directives.
The Trump administration has been vigorously fighting back against these sanctuary efforts, but — to use a pair of Greek analogies — the Sisyphean task honestly feels like lopping the head off a hydra, only to see another three or four sanctuary cities pop up.
It’s been a struggle, to say the least.
(Not to say Trump hasn’t been effective in cracking down on illegal immigration, he’s just facing tons of opposition to it.)
Now, however, one attorney in a deep blue state may have found an ingenious loophole to largely circumvent the sanctuary policies that have plagued this administration’s efforts to clean up immigration.
United States Attorney for the District of California Bill Essayli is launching “Operation Guardian Angel,” a task force comprised of a number of former law enforcement officials from ICE, HSI, DEA, FBI, ATF, and Border Patrol.
Should sanctuary policies be federally outlawed?
The purpose of this task force? “[T]o begin scanning a criminal database every single day to identify arrested illegal aliens in local jurisdictions that DOJ can charge with felony illegal-reentry,” according to Fox News.
“They’ve made it almost impossible for ICE to do their job, issue detainers and get criminal illegal immigrants out of jails. So what we’re doing instead is, we’re going to start issuing warrants,” Essayli told Fox.
And he wants to overwhelm the sanctuary policy pushers with this move.
“We’re going to flood the system with warrants for criminal illegal immigration that are in county jails. They can ignore a detainer, but they cannot ignore a criminal arrest warrant,” Essayli said. “As soon as an illegal immigrant is booked into a county jail, we’re reviewing their file.
“And if they meet the elements of illegal reentry, which is a federal crime, we are filing a complaint and getting an arrest warrant issued before they’re released from state custody.”
Essayli claims that “Operation Guardian Angel” is effectively a beta test for other states to try and tamper down on destructive sanctuary policies.
The U.S. attorney claims his team is ready to file up to 50 warrants a week in their jurisdiction, which includes the sizable Los Angeles.
Essayli seems confident that this workaround should prevent much — if any — opposition from sanctuary policies.
“They have no choice. They will comply,” he said. “And if they don’t comply, if they interfere in our ability to arrest a federal felon, they can expect to face consequences for that. So I don’t expect any resistance from the local authorities.”
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