A sanctuary for alien criminals backfires

Fred Thompson:

If you listen to folks who oppose immigration and border enforcement, you get the feeling they think we put locks on our doors to keep everybody out. The truth is we have locks so we can choose who comes in.

An example of what happens when we don’t make the choice took place August 4th when three Newark, New Jersey, college students with great promise were executed, gangland style. The killers’ ringleader was apparently an illegal alien indicted twice in 2007 for felonies, including the rape of a kindergarten-aged girl.

Why would such a person be set free instead of being handed over to authorities for deportation? The answer is that Newark is a “sanctuary city” which bans cooperation between local officials and federal immigration officials. More than 60 sanctuary zones, including 30 of America’s largest cities, provide a national networked haven for foreign and organized criminals who recruit and operate outside those areas as well. These sanctuaries include Cambridge, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; Austin and Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and New York City.

The consequences of “sanctuary cities” may be most obvious in the city that became the first in 1979 — Los Angeles. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, a confidential California Department of Justice study from the mid-1990’s showed then that at least 60 percent of the members of L.A.’s most violent gangs, with membership in the tens of thousands, were illegal aliens. Of all outstanding murder warrants in Los Angeles, 95 percent are for illegal aliens. Frustrated police say they are powerless to pick up even well-known, previously deported felons.

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Hostility to the rule of law has a price and places like Newark are paying that price now as well as Los Angeles. Our black communities were ravaged by crime when people within those communities looked at the police as the enemy rather than a protector from the predators within their community. As long as communities within this country would rather protect the predators than turn them in they will suffer significant criminal abuse.

Michele Malkin also discusses the problems with the sanctuary movement.