John Torres, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, told Newsmax on Tuesday that illegal migrants living in sanctuary cities or states are oftentimes "ticking time bombs" just waiting to detonate and victimize innocent Americans.
Last week, a mother and her 11-year-old daughter were out for ice cream in Lakewood, New Jersey, when they were struck and killed by an illegal immigrant driving drunk down a road in the wrong direction. While Lakewood has not been identified as a sanctuary jurisdiction by the Department of Homeland Security, New Jersey became a sanctuary state in 2019 after a directive issued the year prior by former state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal took effect.
"Sadly, it's really mind-boggling to think about how a sanctuary city policy is such poor public safety practice," Torres said on "Wake Up America." "In reality, you have multiple bites at the apple. There are many chances to take this person into custody, but, because they're a sanctuary city, they won't transfer them to ICE. Especially when you're talking about recidivist criminals or, in this case, this person has been arrested multiple times for drunk driving. And so, it's just a matter of time. It's a ticking time bomb. You have many of these ticking time bombs in the community just waiting to explode and, sadly, it ends up victimizing innocent people in the community. How are you actually protecting the community with a sanctuary city policy like this?"
Calling the story out of New Jersey "horrible," Torres said "sadly, you're going to continue to see those as long as you have illegal immigrants in these sanctuary cities" and sanctuary jurisdictions not cooperating with ICE to detain and remove illegal migrants.
"Back in my day, when I was the agent in charge in Newark, New Jersey, I had to deal with these types of cases and had to talk to the parents of the victims of these cases and it's not an easy thing to do, especially when the parents are mad at the agency and the agents for not deporting the people," he said. "In other words, you could have prevented this crime if they just would have taken him into custody or transferred them into custody over to ICE. And so, these are really tough cases, and I think you're going to see much more enforcement as ICE continues to hire more people."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.