18 State Attorneys General Urge Biden to Reconsider Killing ICE Operation Targeting Sex Offender Illegal Aliens
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to abandon an operation that targets illegal aliens who have been convicted of sex crimes?
It likely won’t surprise anyone to hear that the Biden administration has done just that.
Operation Talon, a nationwide program aimed at sex offenders who are in the U.S. illegally, went into effect shortly before former President Donald Trump left office. It was canceled at the end of January by the new regime.
The move to eliminate the program essentially protects deviants from the prosecution they would have been subject to had Operation Talon remained in place.
On Thursday, eighteen state attorneys general sent a letter to President Joe Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tae Johnson, requesting that they reverse this senseless decision and reactivate Operation Talon.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote the letter which was signed by the attorneys general of the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.
The letter states, “The cancellation of this program effectively broadcasts to the world that the United States is now a sanctuary jurisdiction for sexual predators. This message creates a perverse incentive for foreign sexual predators to seek to enter the United States illegally and assault more victims, both in the process of unlawful migration and after they arrive. It will also broadcast the message to other criminal aliens who have committed less heinous offenses that any kind of robust enforcement against them is extremely unlikely.”
It ends with a call for the operation to be reinstated. “We urge you to immediately reinstate Operation Talon, adopt an aggressive enforcement policy against illegal aliens convicted of sex crimes, and send a message to sexual predators that they are not welcome in the United States of America.”
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch spoke to Supertalk Mississippi Media on Friday and said, “Human trafficking and rape at the border are only part of the intensifying nationwide crisis of human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced prostitution of minors.”
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“By cancelling Operation Talon, the White House is encouraging sexual predators to seek illegal entry into the United States and ensuring these predators will exploit more victims in the process,” Fitch added. “I signed on to this letter to send a strong message. Sexual predators are not welcome in Mississippi, and they are not welcome in United States of America.”
Citing data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, during the period from October 2014 to May 2018, Supertalk reported that “ICE arrested 19,752 illegal aliens with criminal convictions for whom the most serious prior conviction was a conviction for a sex-related offense.”
Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published an article about the forthcoming guidelines for ICE agents which indicated they “could sharply curb arrests and deportations.”
The article said that “interim instructions sent to senior officials point to a major shift in enforcement.”
“The Biden administration,” The Post noted, “is attempting to reorient ICE, a law enforcement agency that has seen its priorities swing wildly from one administration to the next. But frustrated ICE officials say the proposed changes will take away agents’ discretion and severely constrain their ability to arrest and deport criminals.”
One of the changes, according to a draft memo circulating at ICE and obtained by The Post, is that “agents seeking to arrest fugitives outside of jails and prisons will need prior approval from the agency’s director in Washington justifying the decision while explaining how the enforcement action ‘constitutes an appropriate allocation of limited resources.'”
“They’ve abolished ICE without abolishing ICE,” one official who is unhappy with the expected rules changes spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity. “The pendulum swing is so extreme. It literally feels like we’ve gone from the ability to fully enforce our immigration laws to now being told to enforce nothing.”
That sounds like an accurate assessment.
The world has suddenly become a more dangerous place.
This is what happens when politics take priority over common sense, a frequent occurrence with the left.
Welcome to life under the Biden administration.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
