Andy Caldwell
Law enforcement should go. Illegal alien felons should stay.
Make no mistake about it, that was the clear message conveyed by the organization known as CAUSE. CAUSE was protesting the presence of ICE in Santa Barbara County, holding up signs that said, “ICE Out of Santa Barbara County” as they protested the deportation of 98 career criminal illegal aliens. CAUSE wants safe harbor for these criminals. After all, they have “paid their debt to society.”
Ten of the 98 illegal aliens that were deported were the featured subject of a mandated report by the sheriff to the Board of Supervisors. The 10 perps committed crimes which included spousal battery, kidnapping, lewd and lascivious acts with a child under age 14, unlawful sexual intercourse with a child under 18, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, and sexual battery.
Some of these career criminals had previously been held in custody in our county numerous times, including one perp who had been arrested and held 10 times. Can you imagine the heartache and rage of a victim who realized the person who violated them could have, and should have been deported nine crimes ago? Or how about a woman or a child who has been beaten time and time again, only to have the attacker released back into our community yet another time?
This is, unfortunately, just the tip of an iceberg. Whereas CAUSE wants to treat the criminals as if they are victims, and law enforcement as the villains, the fact is that most of the innumerable victims of these perpetrators are immigrants themselves.
What makes matters worse? Besides the fact that the state of California has tied the hands of law enforcement from fully cooperating with ICE, California has reduced a number of criminal acts from felony to misdemeanor status, meaning that ICE won’t be notified about the majority of these career criminals being held here. That is because they will never be fingerprinted and booked into jail in the first place. What that means is we don’t know how many illegal aliens are in our jails and prisons because the state doesn’t want you to know via a demented “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
What we do know is that 64% of all federal arrests in 2018 were illegal aliens. Furthermore, as the Heritage Foundation has reported, other states are not employing the same “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as it pertains to illegal alien felons in custody. Information gathered from the feds and other state justice departments reveals that upwards of 1 million people in custody in America are illegal aliens and, on average, they have committed 10 crimes each. That means that upwards of 10 million victims have been violated by people who have no right to be here, let alone the right to continue to commit crimes and stay in this country upon release.
The activists at CAUSE are trying to whip up fear and hysteria in the immigrant community as it pertains to routine law enforcement activities. Instead, they should be standing with law enforcement and encouraging policies that will remove these career illegal alien criminals from our community in order to protect us all.
The final insult to injury? Supervisors Das Williams, Joan Hartmann and Gregg Hart expressed their concern that if illegal aliens are afraid of being deported, they won’t access all the freebies the taxpayers have to offer. Nor will they be available to be counted in the census that determines, in part, how much taxpayer revenue will be shelled out to pay for the same. For instance, did you know that upwards of two-thirds of all births in this county are paid for at taxpayer expense?
