A federal district judge appointed by Barack Obama has shackled a program that the Obama administration used to detain criminal aliens.
Judge Andre Birotte Jr., issued a permanent injunction barring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using fingerprint databases when making detainer requests to local police.
Birotte’s ruling blows a hole in the Secure Communities program initiated by President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama. Under that program, when persons were arrested and booked into jail, their fingerprints were sent to the FBI and ICE. If the individual was an illegal alien ICE would ask local authorities to hold the suspect until it could take custody.
Previously Obama’s U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, Birotte on Friday asserted that the databases often contained “incomplete data, significant errors, or were not designed to provide information that would be used to determine a person’s removability.”
John Morton, Obama’s first ICE director, called Secure Communities “the future of immigration enforcement” because it “focuses our resources on identifying and removing the most serious criminal offenders first and foremost.”
A Department of Justice spokesman criticized Birotte’s ruling, saying, “Detainers are critical to the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to remove thousands of criminal aliens each year. Detainers use one of the best features of our law-enforcement system: good-faith cooperation between federal immigration officers and their local law enforcement partners to keep dangerous criminals out of our communities.
“Many courts across the country have correctly concluded that this cooperation is lawful and have rejected legal challenges to the use of detainers. This decision wrongly breaks with those many decisions and puts our communities at risk.”
But Birotte wasn’t done. He also barred ICE from issuing detainers in states where there isn’t an explicit statute authorizing civil immigration arrests on detainers.
The ruling effectively blocks detainers in the federal court system’s Central District of California. The Los Angeles Times called that designation significant because the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, located in the Central District, is the ICE hub from which agents send detainer requests to 43 states, Guam, and Washington, D.C.
Overall, ICE lodged more than 160,000 detainers with local law enforcement agencies during fiscal 2019.
Another point of interest: In 2017, Judge Birotte temporarily halted the Trump administration’s travel ban on countries with terrorist connections. The ban was upheld on appeal.
Americans can only hope that Birotte’s latest spasms of judicial activism will receive similar treatment from higher courts.
13 Comments
All judges appointed by obozo are illegal judges because they were put in because they are in sync with liberal evil demonRATS!! They need to lose their law license and go to jail for failing to uphold American values and supporting criminals who rape ,murder, pillage steal committed many heinous crimes against American citizens!! If we cannot trust the justice system there is no justice in America!! God will be the ultimate JUDGE and His judgement is fair!! PRAY that God will intervene in this instance!!
What needs to b done is removing any and all Judges who knowingly, or should know that what their ruling is a violation of the US Constitution. That would stop so many of these super liberal judges from making these insane ruling knowing that they will be overturned but not quick enough to keep the criminal incarcerated but long enough for him/her to disappear into society.
The people of the United States elected President Trump to make these decisions. Nobody elected this useless #%@& judge.
Anyone who has experience working within law enforcement and/or the court system knows how ridiculously insane this decision is. I guess this judge lives behind his gated estate and is unconcerned for any loved ones (perhaps has none) who may be victimized by criminal illegal aliens (yes, I still call them what they are). As it is, for many years now, ICE has been filing detainers only on illegals arrested on crimes of moral turpitude, or on those who already have warrants for arrest. You already have jails in California that are under administration policy (due to their Sanctuary State leftist beliefs) to not notify ICE of illegals who are arrested. The only way ICE could learn of arrests would be when the jail personnel run a rap sheet search through all sources… that won’t happen now thanks to this insane idiot judge.
He cannot impose a PERMANENT injunction. Certainly not if it’s appealed and a higher court overturns him.
Frankly, such “judges” that even try to do so should be removed from the bench. Permanently.
And prohibited from practicing law anywhere in the CONUS.
The once beautiful state of Ca. is a prime example of what open borders and socialism does to a country, turns it into a crime ridden sh*thole. Wake up Ca. conservatives and start voting these obstructionist out before it’s too late.
This will be shot down like other have been,soon Trump will have all these corrupt Judges gone. Make my words to **** will be hitting the fan very soon when AG Bill Barrs investigation comes out. The Obama administration will be going to prison…. Donald Trump 2020!
Hopefully the Supreme Court will override this liberal moron’s ruling, and law and order will be restored!
I wonder what this low life judge would do if a ms 13 member deported 5, 6 7 8. times gang rape his 10 year old granddaughter you a a disgusting human being.
They say “we are all immigrants”, but OUR forefathers were subject to rigorous scrutiny at Ellis Island before admission to the US. For example, one girl was denied admission to the USA because she had a rash. And these forefathers came here to build a better life and contribute to their new country.
Conversely, I know of two immigrants from Africa who were expelled from UK for love fraud against British citizens and who then came here and continued their fraudulent “marriages” against unsuspecting US citizens. They were allowed here under the “chain immigration” policy (husband and wife) a relative of theirs had set up, and the wife even procured “love” victims for her husband, by herself posing as his sister. The victims were then fleeced thousands of dollars by the “loving” man, who promised them marriage if they would help him get on his feet. His wife, having obtained victims for her “brother” shared in the financial gain obtained from the misled American women. They often had three “love fraud” women going at once.
The Immigration authorities in this “sanctuary city” refused to even hear a complaint by one of this couple’s victims, saying they have a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy regarding immigrants.
The wife of the love fraudster has no papers at all, is here illegally, yet had free hospital service and doctor visits, food stamps, welfare all at taxpayer expense because she had her husband’ s baby here. A baby they see as their “anchor baby” to prevent their deportation.
The husband has a lengthy criminal history here in USA, but immigration refuses to even look at it.
Unsafe “Sanctuary city”
One thought:
IF YOU ARE OBEYING THE LAW, YOU DONT NEED SANCTUARY
Chief Justice Roberts said that there are no Obama judges and no Trump justices, only justices. Wrong. Take almost any case involving immigration and give the numbers who voted on the issue and almost invariably it’s judges appointed by Democrats and those appointed by Republicans on the opposite sides. Imagine if it had been two Hillary appointed justices on the court. We would have de facto open borders. Not that we aren’t already that far from it. You can get tired of Trump but he’s the only one holding back the tide.
It’s interesting how the situation in Britain as far as Brexit compares to this country. The people there got the chance to vote for leaving the European Union, and all the “Remainers” have done for three years is cast aspersions on the voting public as being too stupid to know what they wanted, which was control of their borders. But the elite in Britain are their own special kind of stupid. Decades ago there was a Brit named Kim Philby who was spying for the Russians and was accused by many of doing that for many years. Oh no said all his elite pals, he’s one of us, he went to “our” schools. They said that up until the day he fled to Moscow one step ahead of finally being arrested.
Pingback: Obama Judge Cripples ICE, Guts ‘Secure Communities’ – The Importance of Business
First of all, this “permanent injunction” will collapse on appeal. What’s emerging is a deadly game played by the lower courts in California particularly. They’re poking holes all over immigration enforcement, even against long established practices. PROBING for whatever the Supreme Court might be willing to sacrifice.
Of course that forces Trump to fight every cases all the way to a very busy Supreme Court. docket, In the end, all of it will be upheld because nations have the right to borders, and people have the right to live in safety.
Along the way, the Judges are destroying the Democrat Party.