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Fairfax County, Virginia, is just one of the many illegal-alien sanctuaries that long ago declared itself in rebellion against federal immigration authorities. A few days ago, the police chief punished a cop to prove it.
Colonel Edwin C. Roessler, Jr. suspended the officer because he turned over a deportable illegal alien to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The reason? It’s against department policy, and has been for 12 years, to report an illegal alien to ICE. Even if ICE shows a valid warrant and deportation order, police can’t act.
And if they do, they land in hot water, like the cop who collared an illegal-alien miscreant on September 21.
Another Illegal-alien Crash
The officer responded to a wreck in the Alexandria area of the county, Roessler reported in a canned statement. One of the drivers was the illegal alien.
The illegal, of course, did not have a driver’s license, and so the officer ran his name through the Department of Motor Vehicles to check him out. “During the query of the driver’s information, the officer received notification from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), that the driver was wanted by ICE for an administrative violation warrant on file for the failure to appear for a deportation hearing,” Roessler said.
The officer did the right thing. He contacted the ICE agent on the warrant, who advised the cop that he was minutes away.
After the cop ticketed the border jumper for driving without a license, Roessler said, he “decided to detain the driver through a custodial detention and turned over custody to the ICE agent.”
That was the cop’s big mistake. In Fairfax County, police who help federal agents do their jobs are the real bad guys.
The county even protects illegals with valid deportation orders:
Since 2007, the FCPD General Order 601-Arrest procedures (VIII c. 5. e.) is very clear on this matter:
If the response reads “OUTSTANDING ADMINISTRATIVE WARRANT OF REMOVAL” and the individual is not in custody or being taken into custody for any other violation of law, officers shall not confirm the hit through LESC and shall not take the individual into custody based solely upon the IVF hit. The majority of such administrative warrants represent civil violations of immigration law.
The county trains its officers to ignore illegal aliens and leave them alone, Roessler boasted, because “we do not enforce nor detain for administrative warrants and we have no authority to enforce federal law.”
One wonders what the cops might do if they crossed the trail of an illegal-alien mass murderer or foreign espionage ring, but in any event, “our police officer violated our longstanding policy and deprived a person of their freedom, which is unacceptable,” Roessler declared.
That’s bad enough, but then ICE released the illegal three hours later with an ankle monitor.
Ever on the lookout for evildoers, the police chief “directed an immediate internal investigation to look at all factors in this matter to ensure that all are held accountable for this violation. Our county is one of the most diverse counties in the nation and no one should have the perception that FCPD is acting as a civil immigration agent for ICE.”
And why would that be? Because, the chief laughably said, the officer damaged “our reputation and the longstanding policy that I have stated many times that our officers shall not act as immigration agents.”
Immigrant Lobbyists Upset
As is its wont, the Washington Post found the usual “troubled immigrant advocates” to bash the cops.
A spokesman for the Legal Aid Justice Center says “it’s clear that more training is needed within the ranks of FCPD. This is complicated stuff, but lives are on the line and families can be destroyed when an officer gets it wrong.”
And illegals won’t cooperate with police on local crime if they live in fear, another lobbyist threatened.
“There is a very low trust with any government institution given the current situation with the Trump administration,” the lobbyist said. “With incidents like this, they’ve added to the distrust.”
The Post did not seek the opinion of real Americans who might not trust police after they loose dangerous illegals into the streets, or anyone else who might be “troubled” that police refuse to cooperate with federal agents trying to keep the country safe from foreign criminals.
For his part, the chief assured county residents that he is hot on the trail of the real criminal in this case: “The officer involved in this event has been relieved of all law enforcement duties pending the outcome of this investigation.”
Image: P_Wei via iStock / Getty Images Plus
