A top New York Police Department union leader slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio for his refusal to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and said the city’s police force wants to work with federal immigration authorities but are restrained by their open borders politicians.
Vincent Vallelong, the vice president of New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), said the city’s police force wishes it were able to work with federal immigration authorities, but is unable to because of sanctuary policies Mayor de Blasio’s administration pushed. The SBA leader’s comments come after the NYPD was required to release an illegal alien wanted by ICE, who went on to allegedly kill a 92-year-old woman. Vallelong stated:
We’re kind of fed up with not being able to work with ICE. ICE is not knocking down doors and taking kids out of their house — that’s not what they’re doing. They’re taking criminals off the street. But the policies of our mayor — and pretty much across the country right now — [are] tying our hands and they’re pretty much handcuffing police. There’s no other way to say it. These guys are not the enemy. If someone got locked up in a different state and another jurisdiction is looking to pick them up, it’s extradition to a different state. So I don’t understand why it is we don’t treat this the same way. I do understand it because of the policies of a mayor that’s pretty much out of tune with what’s going with the world.
The NYPD arrested Reeaz Khan, a 21-year-old Guyanese illegal alien, in November for assaulting his father. Khan struck him repeatedly with a broken ceramic mug. His immigration status caught the attention of ICE after officials placed him in custody. The agency lodged a detainer request for Khan, but like thousands of other detainer requests in 2019, the NYPD ignored it and released Khan back into the community. Roughly two months later, authorities identified Khan as the prime suspect in the brutal rape and murder of 92-year-old Maria Fuentes. Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence revealed during a press conference earlier in January that Khan’s ICE detainer was one of the thousands the NYPD ignored.
ICE’s New York bureau field office lodged a total of 7,526 detainers in 2019, Albence said. These detainers targeted 17,873 individuals with criminal convictions and another 6,500 with criminals charges. These crimes included 200 homicides, more than 1,000 sexual offenses and more than 500 hobbies, among many other crimes. However, the NYPD honored a total of 10 detainers in 2019.
De Blasio, has ironically and churlishly pushed back against the recent criticism. In a response to Albence’s press conference, the Democratic mayor said the “morally bankrupt organization that tears families apart and puts innocent children in cages has ZERO right to tell us how to keep our city safe,” on Sunday, appearing to confuse ICE with Customs and Border Protection, adding that he is simply implementing policies that were put into place decades ago.
However, Vallelong says that’s not the case. “I have never, ever heard of basically a stand-down order with contacting ICE until this man took office,” he said of the New York City mayor. “It might have been a different policy where it was a different way of going about dealing with ICE, but not where you’re not allowed to call. Why would we not want to help them out?” Vallelong added.
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