Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez -- fearful of losing important federal money if the county didn't comply with federal immigration detention requests -- didn't want his to be one of the jails that failed to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) detainer program.
Not that Miami-Dade was ever a declared "sanctuary county." Nevertheless, sympathy has always run deep in much of South Florida, where Hispanic heritage is a way of life, to shelter those seeking asylum.
Gimenez, a Republican whose family fled to Miami to escape Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, wrote a letter to the county corrections department in January 2017: "In light of the provisions of (President Trump's just executed) Executive Order, I direct you and your staff to honor all immigration detainer requests received from the Department of Homeland Security."
But Gimenez's letter either didn't circulate or it was deliberately ignored.
According to Judicial Watch, in the first quarter of the year, Miami-Dade denied 93 ICE detainer requests, making it second only to Ventura County, Calif. (188) in counties denying such requests to hold criminal illegal aliens in the first quarter of 2017.
That's 93 individuals whose fingerprints were identified by other law enforcement agencies as belonging to persons of interest, charged with assault, drug or weapons violation -- but processed out before ICE agents could get to them, in defiance of the president's and mayor's orders.
An immigration detainer is a tool used by ICE and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials when the agency identifies potentially deportable individuals who are held in jails or prisons nationwide.
Judicial Watch, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, released Thursday two new productions of documents (45 pages and 680 pages) from DHS revealing hundreds of counties across the U.S. that denied ICE's detainer requests.
The requests contained specific information about scores of criminal charges against released aliens, according to Judicial Watch. The spreadsheets the organization released included statistics on the nature of criminal activities illegal aliens had committed during the first four months of 2017; a nationwide list of jails that failed to cooperate with the ICE detainer program; and the top 50 jurisdictions that failed to cooperative with the detainer program.
Besides Ventura and Miami-Dade, the top counties named with the number of denied detainers really were -- by their own definition -- sanctuary counties: Denver, Colo. (74); Clark, Nev. (68); and Los Angeles, Calif. (57). A total of 284 detainers were declined during the first three months of fiscal year 2017, involving various forms of assault (16); drug-and-alcohol-related charges (39); weapons charges and crimes against persons and property (18).
When law enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders, say federal law enforcement agents, it undermines ICE’s ability to protect public safety and carry out its mission.
The Declined Detainer Outcome Reports, which Judicial Watch fought in court to open, highlighted state and local governments that did not comply with ICE’s detainer program. According to one new ICE email, the DDOR was meant to be easily understood -- so an American citizen sitting at home can open the report, see the total number of detainers issued in a week, detainers issued to jurisdictions that don’t cooperate, the confirmed declined detainer list, and the list of all jurisdictions that don’t honor detainers.
In an April 6, 2017, email from Acting Director of Homeland Security Thomas Homan to Homeland Security staff, Homan said this:
"... NYC is extremely uncooperative. ... They removed our officers from Rikers Island and will not honor detainers. I met with them personally last year in an effort to gain more cooperation. We will review asap.
"In at least one instance, local law enforcement actions went beyond a simple lack of cooperation with ICE to turn over detained illegal aliens to outright obstruction of ICE’s efforts to pick up illegal immigrants in local custody. For example, according to a March 21, 2017, ICE email: “Hennepin County Adult Detention Center released an alien out the front door of the jail as an ICE officer was waiting in their sally port to take him into custody.”
Said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, “These new documents confirm that sanctuary policies are dangerous and help the worst of worst criminal element. The complaints of sanctuary politicians aside, the Trump administration must catalogue the continued threat to the public safety caused by lawless sanctuary policies.”
The city of Miami has never formally declared itself a sanctuary city, unlike New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and others. Miami-Dade County has refused to indefinitely detain inmates wanted by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency since 2013. However, The Miami Herald reported that policy is in place less because of ideology than because the feds didn't fully reimburse the county for holding the inmates.
Though Republicans in particular hailed Gimenez's bravery in honoring the president's January executive order, the mayor called his decision "a no-brainer."
"When President Trump put out his order, I thought, you know, I think this gentleman is serious," Gimenez said on WPLG's "This Week in South Florida" on Feb. 4. "And by the way, we have $350 million in federal funding that we receive every year. And not only that, we are going to try and get hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars for our transit system. Which is completely discretionary federal money."
Gimenez was unavailable Friday when Sunshine State News attempted to contact him.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
