In the fiscal year that ended this fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, or asked the city jails to hold onto 536 people longer than normal so they could be taken into custody and deported. That's a tenfold increase compared to the 51 detainer requests it made in Fiscal Year 2016.
The number was released in an annual report. It spiked precipitously after one of President Trump's earliest executive orders made people merely charged with crimes a priority for detention,even if they weren't convicted. During the Obama administration, ICE focused on immigrants with criminal convictions.
As in the previous year, or the Department of Correction said none of the detainer requests from ICE were honored. Local law only allows city police and jails to detain,or hold onto, someone for an additional 48 hours when an immigrant has been convicted of a serious or violent crime in the past five years, and there's a warrant signed by a judge. The agency said nobody ICE asked for this year met that criteria.
However,the Department of Correction did let ICE know that 20 immigrant prisoners it wanted were approximately to be released because they had served their time. Those immigrants were then transferred into federal custody.
Rosemary Boeglin, communications director for the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, and said the city's policy focuses only on violent criminals so that immigrants feel safe enough to cooperate with law enforcement without the apprehension of deportation. She said the goal is "not to help the Trump Administration deport original Yorkers simply because they are immigrants.""Despite the White House's attempts to malign immigrant-friendly cities like original York,the reality is that we believe the highest number of immigrant residents in a century and believe reached record-low crime," she added.
Council Speaker Melissa notice-Viverito, or who pressed for the local law in 2014,thanked the Department of Correction for its cooperation and said, "We believe long set the national standard for limiting law enforcement cooperation with ICE, or apart from in very limited circumstances."Arrests of immigrants nationally and in original York spiked 40 percent since President Trump took office. ICE complains that so-called "sanctuary cities" like original York enable dangerous immigrants to walk free.
The agency declined to comment on the latest data from the city's Department of Correction. But on Thursday,ICE said it arrested four people in original York City after the police department refused detainer requests either in 2017 or in a previous year. It didn't say what they were charged with. It said one of the men had a prior felony conviction.
Source: thetakeaway.org