Horowitz: The parole of murderers and the silencing of victims



George Gascon, the new Soros-backed district attorney in Los Angeles, promised "the lowest level of intervention for the criminal justice system." That quite literally means letting murderers out of prison.

In 1991, Howard Elwin Jones was convicted of murdering two teenagers at a party. Jones, a known gang member, should have received the death penalty, but because he was just shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the murders, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison. After Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 260 into law, most juvenile murderers became eligible retroactively for parole after 25 years.

In the past, eligibility for parole didn't mean automatic release, especially for convicted murderers, but now with prosecutors in major cities acting like defense attorneys, it is making it a lot harder to keep denying them parole at their biannual hearings. After being denied parole in 2015 and 2017, constantly making the victims' families relive the experience over and over again, Jones was granted parole earlier this year and will be released next week. Thus, while his victims will remain teenagers in the grave forever, Jones now gets to live a normal life and is only 50 years old.

So, what changed this time at the parole hearing? According to KTTV-TV's Bill Melugan, George Gascon has barred all prosecutors in the DA's office from attending parole hearings, much less advocating on behalf of the victims' families, even in the worst cases. Dianne Baker-Taylor, the sister of one of Jones' victims who was forced to attend the hearing alone, told KTTV that Jones didn't even express remorse. "It's isolating, you feel alone, you don't feel like you have anybody in your corner," she said.

According to Baker-Taylor, Governor Gavin Newsom never replied to her plea against the release of Jones, and the only correspondence the family ever got from the state was the letter of notification that Jones would be released.

The granting of parole then went through a 120 day review period, which included Governor Newsom’s review. Dianne… https://t.co/Z1ZcEMVqZL

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) 1622651548.0

The entire criminal justice system is designed to advocate on behalf of the criminals while shafting the victims, yet the politicians still think the criminal justice system is too punitive for criminals.

Since his election last year, Gascon announced numerous changes to the office, including that his prosecutors would no longer charge any juvenile as an adult or seek the death penalty for any murderer. He also stopped filing enhancement charges for gang members or those with multiple prior felony convictions.

The results have been devastating. According to L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who now has to deal with the fallout from Gascon's policies, every major crime category is up significantly over this time last year. In May 2021, the county experienced a 95% increase in murder, a 7% increase in rape, a 13% increase in aggravated assaults, a 40% increase in grand theft auto, and a 22% increase in arson incidents, compared to May 2020.

Most people are following the recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom, but the recall against Gascon is likely to make a bigger impact. In the case of the gubernatorial election, it's quite unlikely that a Republican will unseat Newsom in California. But a successful recall election against Gascon in L.A. County would likely trigger the emergence of another Democrat who is more friendly to law enforcement and victims of crime, similar to the prior prosecutor Gascon unseated in a runoff election last year. Recall organizers have until October 27 to gather 580,000 signatures, a goal they are confident they will exceed.

Republicans would be stupid not to latch onto the crime issue and use it as a cudgel in suburban neighborhoods in all 50 states. While California usually leads the nation in pro-criminal trends, the movement to parole some of the worst criminals is endemic of many other states. Virginia's parole board has released dozens of murderers, as has the state of Massachusetts.

However, the political jailbreak of violent prisoners is not just in blue states. Utah has a crisis of hundreds of violent criminals being paroled, while parole officers are becoming reluctant to reincarcerate them after they violate the terms of parole. A KUTV report from Wendy Halloran discovered that Terence Trent Vos, one of the most notorious gangsters in Salt Lake City, who was serving time for drive-by shootings, aggravated assaults, robberies, and weapons violations, was granted a rare form of compassionate release in 2020 because his daughter was murdered by her own mother. Now his girlfriend is dead, allegedly murdered by Vos in May.

It took just five weeks for Vos to wind up back in prison after he was caught drunk driving. But then COVID hit, and like other red states, Utah released a bunch of criminals including Vos. When parole officers attempted to visit Vos on a routine follow-up, they could not make contact with him but did find bullet holes in Vos' home. The officers never followed up on the suspicious activity, nor did they issue a warrant for his arrest after they failed to make contact with him for months.

On Jan. 30, 2021, Vos' girlfriend pressed charges after he allegedly beat her severely in a restaurant. By that point the system had failed, and the ankle monitor they gave Vos turned out to be worthless. Police later found the body of Vos' girlfriend, Shandon Scott, in a car on Interstate 80 on May 1.

Just this week in allegedly conservative Fort Wayne, Indiana, Cohen Bennett Hancz-Barron, 21, was arrested for the gruesome murder of a woman and three children. Local media report that the suspect had a robbery conviction for which he was sentenced in February to six years in prison, but was allowed to serve all of the sentence at home! Just two months later, police filed a "notice of escape" and a warrant for his arrest, but as always it was too late. They could not locate him before the murder.

Now imagine a country with tens of thousands more people like him out on the streets, supposedly being monitored by parole officers, thanks to criminal justice deform. Do you feel safer?

The only question now is when all the "conservative" governors who joined the Soros DAs and blue-state governors in promoting de-incarceration will realize their failed social experiment is destroying the country.

Horowitz: Houston career criminal released after arrest for murder now wanted … for murder

Rarely do we give victims the help they need or the attention they deserve. Yet the protection of our citizens — to guard them from becoming victims — is the primary purpose of our penal laws. Thus, each new victim personally represents an instance in which our system has failed to prevent crime. Lack of concern for victims compounds that failure.” ~Ronald Reagan, April 8, 1981, proclamation creating National Crime Victims Week.

Gerald Washington, 27, of Houston should be the poster child for criminal justice reform on behalf of victims of crime, but this is the side of the issue that is never discussed by the “reform” movement, which simply does not believe in incarceration.

29-year-old Reginald Larry was on his way to visit his grandmother last week when he stopped off at a corner store in Houston to get a drink. That’s when Houston police say Washington shot and killed him just outside the store with no apparent motive. He remains a fugitive as of this writing.

This could have happened to anyone else in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if we had true criminal justice reform that prioritizes public safety over criminal freedoms, Larry would be alive today.

Washington was already charged with murdering a woman and shooting two others, but he was released on bail. And he had a criminal history and parole violations before that murder, but was still granted bail. Here’s the criminal history, according to ABC13.

  • Washington was charged for two counts of burglary in 2018 but was given parole rather than prison time.

  • Despite violating the terms of his parole several times, he was not incarcerated.

  • On October 5, 2018, according to Harris County court records, Washington was charged with murder and with aggravated assault for shooting two other women. According to ABC13, “One of the victims told ABC13 she was shot so many times that she played dead. She was in the hospital for a month and in rehabilitation for two months. She said she was shot between six or seven times.” One would think someone like this would be held without bond, but he was released on $200,000 bond, which usually means the defendant only pays 10 percent in cash.

A search of Harris County court records also shows a criminal trespassing charge and assault resulting in bodily injury in 2013. He served just 30 days and was given parole. He also spent 45 days in jail in 2016 for evading arrest.

He was wearing an ankle bracelet during this past release on bond, but it evidently did not prevent him from shooting Larry. Police say he has cut off his ankle monitor since the murder last week and remains a fugitive.

It’s a known fact that ankle bracelets simply do not deter violent criminals if they are not incarcerated, and there are too few officers to monitor too many volatile criminals. Yet our entire justice system, along with the weight of dozens of well-funded “criminal justice reform” nonprofits, only have the concerns of people like Gerald Washington in mind with their policies, not people like Reginald Larry.

What this case also demonstrates is that the weak-on-crime judges and policies are not only native to blue states, but are alive and well in states like Texas, particularly in Harris County. In December, a female Houston police officer was allegedly killed by Tavores Dewayne Henderson, a man who openly bragged about avoiding jail time, despite his extensive criminal record in three counties. Then, even after the capital murder charge, he was initially offered $150,000 bond before it was revoked.

Harris County is following in the footsteps of New York by abolishing pretrial jail in most cases. In addition to the problem of releasing dangerous violent criminals, there is further concern from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that such policies will lead to the release of criminal aliens before ICE is able to apprehend them, in contravention to the state’s anti-sanctuary law.

This concern played out in real life when Emilio Duarte-Lone, an illegal alien from Honduras with a deportation order, was arrested for DWI in December, but was released by Harris County without being turned over to ICE. He, of course, failed to show up to his January 24 court hearing and remains a fugitive.

I often hear proponents of jailbreak policies dismiss our concerns of rising crime after 25 years of plummeting crime by suggesting that most of the murders taking place are gang-on-gang violence, as if law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. But career criminals like Gerald Washington don’t necessarily discriminate in choosing their victims. Just ask the family of Reginald Larry.

Illegal alien hired by Baltimore-area church as bus driver charged with 19 counts of child molestation

Support of criminals and illegal aliens by many wayward churches is touted as the ultimate expression of compassion rooted in Biblical values. But it’s merely virtue-signaling – and not of virtues. Nowhere is this more evident than in the harboring of criminal aliens.

On Thursday, police in Annapolis, Maryland, arrested Jose Argueta, 44, an illegal alien from El Salvador, on 19 child sex assault charges. He is accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl on four occasions and taking pornographic images of her during several of those incidents since mid-December.

"It was obvious that there was a lot of information confirming that this had happened and also photographs unfortunately--pornographic images of this child," said Sgt. Amy Miguez of the Annapolis Police Department in an interview with reporters.

ICE lodged a detainer with the Anne Arundel County Detention Center on the day of the arrest, but for now Argueta is being held without bail.

How did Argueta have access to her? According to police, he met her while serving as a van driver for a local church, transporting the victim and her family to their church in Glen Burnie, Maryland, where Argueta also lived. Glen Burnie is a suburb of Baltimore on the south side in Anne Arundel County and has seen a massive influx of Central Americans in recent years, just like neighboring Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

What is further troubling is that, according to court records, Argueta had a history of traffic violations and a DUI. Yet he had a valid Maryland trucking license. How was someone like this able to remain in the country and openly drive for a church? The entire purpose of the 1986 amnesty deal was to make it illegal for someone here unlawfully to work. This alleged crime was therefore 100 percent preventable.

The name of the church has not been publicized, but one has to wonder whether the church even cared to verify his immigration status or if church authorities actually knew he was an illegal alien. Harboring criminals tends to lead to more criminal activity – in this case, the terrible crime of child molestation.

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Illegal alien with prior criminal history allegedly kills motorist while illegally driving forklift

On November 17, Ulises Mondragon Umanzor, 30, an illegal alien from El Salvador, was arrested for allegedly running a stop sign while driving a forklift and fatally striking James Zakos, a 70-year-old Floridian, whose car had the right of way. Mondragon Umanzor reportedly failed to stop and return to the scene of the accident.

There are two important points in this case that should spawn a robust public policy debate on immigration enforcement: Mondragon Umanzor did not have either a valid driver’s license or a license to operate heavy machinery, and he had a history of trouble with the law on the roads. Had our laws been enforced, he shouldn’t have been able to get a job here, and he should have been deported on numerous occasions. He had been caught at least three times since 2011 driving without a license.

Earlier this year, Florida passed a law barring any potential “sanctuary” jurisdictions from ignoring ICE detainers on criminal aliens who pass through local jails. However, even jurisdictions that don’t thwart ICE could still do a lot more to prevent crime by illegal aliens if they would actively notify ICE upon the first infraction of an illegal alien they contact. As demonstrated by this case, illegal aliens are often caught for relatively minor driving infractions. Yet they are able to cycle in and out of the local court system without ever being turned over to ICE. That appears to be what happened in this case. Had the system been working the way it should, Zakos would still be alive.

Here is Mondragon Umanzor’s criminal history just from Palm Beach County:

  • On Sept. 12, 2011, Mondragon Umanzor was arrested in Palm Beach County for driving without a license and for driving with an open container of alcohol.

  • Just a few months later, in February 2012, he was caught again driving without a license.

  • On Nov. 4, 2012, he was arrested for possession of cocaine.

  • In Sept. 2016, he was caught driving without a license.

  • In May 2018, he was caught driving around a barricade, of course without a license. He accrued over $1,000 in outstanding debt to the court.

Why was someone like this never deported? In 2012, he was even pre-emptively suspended from having a license by the court, despite never having had one, all without anybody ever giving a thought to deporting him. While these seem like minor charges for which we wouldn’t lock up Americans too long, they can portend serious public danger and are all habitual crimes. As such, there’s no reason we should be taking chances with people who should be removed from the country anyway at the first sign of trouble.

It should be standard procedure that any time a resident interacts with police or with a court, he is asked a simple question: “Of which country are you a citizen?” Then, local cops should be required to notify ICE about anyone who does not answer, “The United States.” That way, we can ensure that this is the last act of reckless driving committed by this individual in the U.S.

In fact, police are already required to find out citizenship, ironically, for the good of the alien, pursuant to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR). Florida, like every state requires police to ascertain the country of citizenship in order to notify consular officials that a national of their country has been detained. Why doesn’t every every arrest or detention by police therefore preclude any situation where a foreign national is released without the federal government knowing about it?

So much crime could be prevented by following this simple international protocol. If it’s good enough for the sake of the alien to discover his citizenship status upon any arrest, it should be good enough for the security of our communities.

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More Americans killed by illegal alien DUI epidemic as open-borders shill Elizabeth Warren decries ‘traffic violence’

Sunday was World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. No, I don’t have it marked on my calendar. I know this from the Democrat presidential front-runner Elizabeth Warren. But her anarchist policies would ensure there are thousands more American victims of drunk driving every year.

Yesterday, Warren tweeted about remembering victims of “traffic violence.”

I commend her for recognizing the inherent danger and violence in people misusing several thousand pounds of steel at high speeds. Drunk and reckless driving is truly devastating, as drunk driving alone kills 11,000 people annually in the U.S., cutting down many in the prime of their lives.

What Warren failed to mention, however, is that her immigration and criminal justice policies will ensure that not only fewer American drunk drivers are deterred and punished, but that we will import and harbor ever more drunk drivers as well.

On Friday, I reported on two tragic DUI manslaughters that were allegedly committed by illegal aliens who had previous encounters with police and could have been removed, thereby making these homicides 100 percent preventable. One victim, Samuel W. Jackson of Norristown, Penn., was a Vietnam War veteran and was killed just hours before Veterans Day 2019. Here’s another tragedy from that very same day, November 10.

Hailey and Stephen Wagner, along with Ethan Michael Handly, 15, were traveling in a Dodge van driven by their grandma, Marjory Howell Wagner Regan, 65, in Smithfield, N.C., on Sunday. In an instant, the lives of Marjory and Ethan were brought to a violent end when an allegedly drunk-driving illegal alien travelling 90 mph hit their van from behind when it was stopped at a red light.

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Jailbreak + sanctuaries = Disaster: NYC releases illegal alien child molester repeatedly

Pro-criminal alien policies and general jailbreak, aka weak-on-crime policies, are converging in America’s major cities to create the greatest public safety threat of our time. Big city governments are refusing to turn illegal aliens over to federal immigration authorities, even with child sex charges or convictions. Likewise, many violent criminals – American or alien – are being released on low bond pretrial, and many barely serve time even after being convicted. The latest example is the case of Grachowe Harrichand in New York City.

On March 6, 2019, Harrichand was arrested by the NYPD and booked on multiple charges of sexual assault against a minor, acting in manner to injure a child less than 17 years old, and aggravated harassment. Harrichand happened to also be an illegal alien from Guyana who was previously ordered deported, according to ICE. “On June 3, Harrichand pleaded guilty to Act In Manner Injure Child, and was sentenced to six months in custody,” wrote ICE in a press release. “The detainer was not honored and Harrichand was released from the custody of the New York City Department of Correction (NYCDOC).”

This is a classic example of how even the worst criminals barely serve any time, and prosecutors are forced to take plea agreements. This would be bad enough if it were only the many American violent criminals who are let out of prison after serving just a few months behind bars. But given that Harrichand is an illegal alien – with a previous order of deportation no less – he should have been turned over to ICE for removal so at least there is one less child molester on the streets of New York.

Well, given the recidivist nature of child sex offenders, it’s no surprise that Harrichand was arrested by the NYPD just days later on July 5 on new charges of sexually assaulting a minor. At this point, you probably expect that even a sanctuary city would either finally lock up this repeat violent offender on a steep pretrial bond or, at the very least, would honor an ICE detainer. Tragically, there is no floor to the moral depravity of both pro-criminal alien and pro-criminal policies in general. Harrichand was later released pending the trial without any notification to ICE, much less a fulfillment of the detainer request. Harrichand was once again released on the streets.

It wasn’t until October 9 that ICE deportation officers arrested him in South Richmond Hill, New York. Imagine if we didn’t have ICE going after criminal aliens. Even the worst repeat child sex offenders would still be on the streets, and indeed, some of them are still at large.

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Maryland sanctuary county: Eighth illegal alien charged with sex crimes in under two months

A sanctuary jurisdiction in Maryland is back in the news again after yet another illegal alien has been charged with rape.

According to WJLA-TV's Kevin Lewis, 26-year-old ride-share driver Oluwakayode Adebusuyi raped an intoxicated woman in his car. ICE says that the suspect is a Nigerian national living in the United States illegally and has lodged a detainer on him.

“On Sept. 1, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers lodged a detainer with the Montgomery County Detention Center on unlawfully present Nigerian national Oluwakayode Adewole Adebusuyi. Adebusuyi was arrested Aug. 28 on local charges, including rape,” an ICE statement reads.

Lewis also points out that the suspect is at least the eighth illegal alien charged with either rape or sexual abuse of a minor in Montgomery County, Maryland, since July 25.

Previous cases in Montgomery County include:

The trend has brought a great deal of unwanted attention to the Washington, D.C., suburb, which was quite proud of its sanctuary policies just a few months ago.

In response to the negative news coverage and attention in the wake of the charges, the county council put out a statement blaming "a lot inaccurate information spread by the White House, President Trump, Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli, local and national conservative news outlets and neo-Nazi sympathizers."

Cuccinelli responded to that statement by challenging county executive Ron Elrich to a debate on the merits of the county's criminal justice and immigration enforcement policies.

“Sanctuary County, Montgomery County, MD cannot debate the failure of its sanctuary policies on the merits,” Cuccinelli said in a string of tweets last week, “so they resort to ad hominem attacks using nazi implications – arguments out of bounds in civil society.”

“If MontCo Chairman Elrich thinks the sanctuary policy they are so proud of is so good, I challenge him to a debate on the subject,” the immigration chief continued. “I’ll defend children and crime victims, Elrich can defend rapists and murders who shouldn’t even be in this country.”

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Illegal alien alleged drunk driver charged with killing retired NY cop in crash

Denis Motherway, an 85-year-old retired NYPD officer, died tragically late Sunday night. He was being taken to a local Long Island, New York, hospital from a rehab center in an ambulette. In middle of the ride, while the vehicle had its lights and sirens on, a drunk driver crashed into the ambulette with his 1997 Cadillac STS, turning the vehicle on its side and killing Motherway. The suspect, Alvaro Gutierrez-Garcia, was charged with vehicular manslaughter, two counts of driving while intoxicated and one count of aggravated DWI for drinking and driving over twice the legal limit.

This tragic story has made its rounds in local media around New York City. It’s especially tragic because, according to the local NBC affiliate that interviewed one of his children, one of Motherway’s other sons was also killed by a drunk driver in 2009. What was not reported, however, in a single publication, is that this crime was even more awful because it was 100 percent avoidable if our immigration laws had been fully enforced. Gutierrez-Garcia is an illegal alien.

“On Sept. 4, ICE lodged a detainer with the Nassau County Correctional Center on Alvaro Gutierrez Garcia, an illegally present Salvadoran national, after his arrest on multiple felony charges, including vehicular homicide,” said ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow in response to an inquiry from CR regarding his immigration status. “ICE will seek to take custody of Gutierrez Garcia at the conclusion of his criminal proceedings.”

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Why Americans are never told about murders by illegal aliens

Despite horrific Bambi Larson murder, Santa Clara County continuing sanctuary status

Santa Clara County, California, welcomes illegal aliens, evidently even those arrested for drugs, kidnapping, battery against a police officer, and burglary.

Carlos Eduardo Arevalo Carranza, an illegal alien from El Salvador, had been arrested 10 times on such charges over the past few years, but the county refused to hand him over to ICE on seven occasions when ICE requested an immigration hold. (Three other detainers were lodged in Los Angeles County.) Subsequently, Carranza was charged in March for allegedly beating and stabbing Bambi Larson to death in her own home in south San Jose. Yet, shockingly, after much debate, the county will continue its defiance of federal immigration law.

Santa Clara County has long been a sanctuary jurisdiction that has refused to even notify ICE of releases, much less work to honor detainers, long before California passed a statewide prohibition on honoring detainers in 2017. Following the murder of Larson, some county officials engaged in soul-searching about their responsibility for all the unnecessary criminal activity committed by people like Carranza who could easily be removed from the country after arrests for prior crimes. Yet on Tuesday, the Board of County Supervisors voted 5-0 to continue its policy of not even notifying ICE when law enforcement releases illegal aliens arrested for crimes, no matter the charge or criminal history.

One county supervisor, Susan Ellenberg, defended the move as a desire to “separate issues of immigration status from administration of our criminal justice system.” But ICE officials say they are not asking local officials to do immigration work; they are merely asking them not to actively shield criminal aliens from justice. “Foremost, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) neither expects, nor wants, local law enforcement agencies to execute immigration enforcement activities in their communities,” said Erik S. Bonnar, acting field office director for ICE’s Northern California office in a statement to CR. “But as law enforcement officers, we do expect our law enforcement partners to participate in protecting the American public. I urge Santa Clara County officials to prioritize public safety and the rights of past and future victims, as opposed to providing sanctuary to dangerous criminals who are in the United States illegally.”

Next, the county officials bizarrely defended their decision by asserting that there is no way of knowing someone’s immigration status, as if we are living in the Wild West. “There is no practical and legal way of knowing if a person in our custody is truly undocumented,” said Supervisor Mike Wasserman.

Bonnar strongly disagrees with this assertion because the local officials literally don’t have to do any investigative work. The discovery of immigration status is one of the most basic profile facts built into the system automatically.

“When a federal, state or local law enforcement agency makes an arrest, the Immigration Alien Response (IAR) process begins,” said Bonnar. “As part of the booking process, fingerprints are submitted to the FBI and compared against DHS databases, constituting an immigration alien query (IAQ). If a match occurs, ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) in Williston, Vermont generates an immigration alien response (IAR), which provides information regarding the subject's immigration status, criminal history, and other important biographical information. At this point, ICE Field Offices and the Pacific Enforcement Response Center receive and review the IAR to verify the subject's identity, immigration status, criminal record, custody status, and removability. If the subject is removable and in custody, ICE components lodge a detainer.”

In other words, county police don’t have to do any legwork. An ICE detainer is the identification of a criminal alien, because the feds already have the relevant information. Yet county officials are defending their defiance of ICE detainers along with not notifying ICE of arrested illegal aliens’ release under the circular logic that they have no way of knowing who is here illegally.

It’s not like county officials are in the dark about this process. “ICE has responded to all requests for information made by the Santa Clara board,” said Bonnar. He said ICE remains open to “compromise” that will “further the common goal of enhancing the safety of our communities.”

The danger of shielding the most violent and repeat criminal offenders among foreign nationals is hard to overstate. According to Bonnar, just since the county officials began debating and reviewing their sanctuary policies on April 9, “ICE has issued a total of 176 immigration detainers with the Santa Clara County Jail,” which is almost an average of three a day. Not only were none of these detainers honored, “108 of these individual had prior arrests,” which resulted in prior ICE detainers being lodged at the time, and all of them “were released without notification to ICE.”

This is a shocking amount of illegal alien criminality for a single county. Just last month, I reported that Ismael Huazo-Jardinez, an illegal alien, was arrested in Santa Clara for killing three members of a family sleeping in their trailer home. He was allegedly drunk while driving and plowed into the trailer home, killing all but the 11-year-old daughter in the Pacheco family. County officials released him on bond and refused to even notify ICE.

The fact is that there is a large criminal population among illegal aliens, and all of their subsequent crimes after their first arrests could be avoided simply by allowing ICE to remove them. This demonstrates how, contrary to the opinion of the local officials, criminal justice and immigration are indeed intertwined. Most criminals of all demographics, particularly murderers, are recidivists with prior records. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than three-fourths of felony defendants had a prior arrest history, with 69 percent having multiple prior arrests.

And these are not just parking violations or littering. Bonnar revealed that “the aggregate crimes committed by these individuals” who were released in defiance of ICE detainers “include assault with deadly weapon, obstructing police, possession of drugs for sale, domestic violence, robbery, indecent exposure, participation [in] criminal street gang, and arson.”

Bonnar lamented the fact that political leaders in Santa Clara are not listening to the concerns of their own local law enforcement. “It’s unfortunate that current local and state laws and policies tie the hands of local law enforcement agencies, like the San Jose Police Department, that continually voice their want and need to work with ICE to promote public safety. We applaud our local law enforcement partners who are working within the law to make it less complicated for my agents to apprehend criminal aliens released from local custody.”

Following the Bambi Larson murder, the San Jose mayor, San Jose police chief, and the county district attorney all expressed a desire to change the cooperation policies. “If we have custody of a violent gang member, there should be a call [to ICE],” said San Jose Police Union President Paul Kelly in a press conference this week.

Indeed, the permanent end of the criminal career of all foreign criminals is just a phone call away. Seldom is such a critical public policy problem affecting the core safety of so many communities so easily and completely solvable.

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