Chicago officials are not backing down in the face of criticism from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials after a Mexican national was released from jail and subsequently re-arrested for molesting a 3-year-old child shortly after he was returned to the community.
“If ICE is complaining, then they should do their job better,” said Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot last week after ICE’s Chicago field office director Robert Guadian took issue with the sanctuary policies that granted Christopher Puente, a previously deported aggravated felon, an opportunity to sexually molest a child at a McDonald’s restaurant.
“Puente should have been in ICE custody last year and removed to his home country. Instead, irresponsible lawmaking allowed him to walk free and prey on our most vulnerable,” stated Guadian in reference to the June 2019 detainer issued by ICE after Puente was arrested on theft charges.
Following the mayor’s lead, Chicago Police Department (CPD) officials stated they would continue to actively hinder ICE’s efforts to enforce federal law.
“Our pledge to restrict ICE access to our information systems and our refusal to cooperate with ICE immigration enforcement measures has not changed,” the department brazenly asserted in a statement.
According to ICE, since he was deported in 2014, the Mexican criminal has been convicted of burglary, forgery, trespassing, domestic battery and related offenses. Each of those arrests represented an opportunity for local authorities to turn Puente over to ICE and ensure that he was permanently removed from the streets of the Windy City.
And Puente isn’t the only foreign criminal walking unimpeded through the streets of Chicago. The detainer issued for his arrest is just one of more than 1,000 detainers that Cook County, which covers Chicago, refused to honor in FY2019, and in FY2018, police officials refused to honor a single one of the 1,162 detainers issued.
Lightfoot’s dedicated loyalty to the lawlessness of sanctuary policies means is the reason why more than 2,000 criminal illegal aliens are today freely walking the streets of Chicago. Perhaps it is time she do her job better.
