While Immigration and Customs Enforcement's ramped-up enforcement efforts in the nation's sanctuary cities and states is focusing on criminals, it's "important to also arrest any illegal alien that they encounter," retired Immigration and Naturalization Service agent Michael Cutler told Newsmax on Sunday.
"Anybody who violates the immigration laws should be, in an ideal world, arrested," Cutler told Newsmax's "Wake Up America Weekend" on Sunday, while responding to border czar Tom Homan's announcement about the enhanced enforcement efforts.
"What they're doing is focusing on those who pose the biggest threat to society, the criminals, potential terrorists, human traffickers, and so forth," Cutler said.
However, "collateral arrests" are necessary "so that anybody who enters the United States illegally or violates their immigration status cannot go to sleep at night, confident that they won't be arrested tomorrow," he said.
The added push, said Cutler, has "nothing to do with race, religion, or ethnicity."
"I recommend that everybody go to Title VIII of the United States Code, Section 1182," he said. "Those are the classes of aliens who are to be kept out of the country. It's about people who pose a threat to public health, public safety, national security, and the jobs and wages of Americans. Who in their right mind could be opposed to a law that has that as its purpose?
President Donald Trump last week announced a registry of nearly 500 sanctuary jurisdictions, and Cutler said that move is "in lockstep" with the recommendations and findings of the 9/11 Commission.
"We are in a risky world," he said. "There are many adversarial nations looking to exploit vulnerabilities. And what the Trump administration is doing is protecting America and Americans from an existential threat. That's exactly what we voted for."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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