‘Sanctuary' city mayor confronted after gang member allegedly assaults federal officers
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio confronted Denver Mayor Mike Johnston for upholding "sanctuary" city policies that allowed an illegal immigrant and suspected Tren de Aragua gang member to walk free and allegedly assault federal officers.
During a House Oversight Committee hearing on sanctuary cities Wednesday, Jordan slammed Johnston for ignoring an ICE detainer request and only giving federal agents one-hour notice before the Denver Sheriff's Department released Abraham Gonzalez, a 23-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant charged with assault, menace and theft of a vehicle.
After being released by the Denver Sheriff's Department Feb. 28, Gonzalez assaulted ICE agents attempting to apprehend him, according to a statement by ICE.
ICE has said that sanctuary city policies preventing law enforcement from honoring detainers and cooperating with federal authorities pose a significant risk to both agents and to the public.
Despite this, Johnston has doubled down on the city's sanctuary policies and has vowed to direct law enforcement to resist Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
During the hearing, Jordan showed a picture of the notice slip given by the Denver Sheriff's Department to ICE in which the location of release listed was simply the "streets."
Addressing Johnston, Jordan said, "Three hundred and forty-five days you had him in custody, and ICE said, 'Hey can you give us 48 hours heads up?' You gave them one-hour notice."
Johnston asserted that the Denver sanctuary policy does not shield people from law enforcement but rather "provides services." He said there were six ICE agents present when Gonzalez was released but admitted that the illegal immigrant was allowed to walk freely out into a parking lot.
"Guess what happened in that parking lot … one of the ICE officers got assaulted, didn't he? They had to tase the guy, didn't they?" Jordan asked.
"An officer got assaulted because your policy, which says, 'We're going to release him to — in your words, not mine — to the streets.' They have to arrest him in the parking lot. They bring six officers when they could have just had one or two just come in your facility, into your jail, and take the guy there. But you won't do it that way."
Addressing Johnston's testimony earlier in the hearing, Jordan said, "You used the word safe, safer or safety 13 times. Talking about 'my job is the safety of the people in Denver, we're prioritizing making sure everyone is safer.' That's a lie.
"It was not safer for the ICE agents who are part of your community. No way was it safer," Jordan added. "The safest thing to do is to say, 'ICE we got him in custody. Come here. We'll release him.' [Instead, it's], 'We held him 345 days. We can't hold him a second longer. We can't wait for you to come inside the building. We got to let him go so you have to arrest him in the parking lot.' That is how stupid sanctuary policies are and what they mean to the community that you put at risk and to the ICE officer who was assaulted."
Johnston said he was open to making "adjustments" to how releases are conducted but insisted this was the first instance of an ICE agent being assaulted during an arrest in his city.
"It's a simple question," Jordan shot back. "You can release him in the parking lot, give ICE one hour notice and they got to send six officers to arrest this guy, or you can say, 'Here's what we're going to do. We're going to hold him. You come in and bring two officers in and turn him in.' Why not do it that way? You know why you don't do that way? Because you're a sanctuary city. This is the whole point."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
19 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump's top general just undercut his ‘invasion' claims
One of the problems with making a series of brazen and hyperbolic claims is that it can be hard to keep everyone on your team on the same page. And few Trump administration claims have been as brazen as the idea that the Venezuelan government has engineered an invasion of gang members into the United States. This claim forms the basis of the administration's controversial efforts to rapidly deport a bunch of people it claimed were members of the gang Tren de Aragua – without due process. But one of the central figures responsible for warding off such invasions apparently didn't get the memo. At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine acknowledged that the United States isn't currently facing such a threat. 'I think at this point in time, I don't see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading,' Caine said in response to Democratic questioning. This might sound like common sense; of course the United States isn't currently under invasion by a foreign government. You'd probably have heard something about that on the news. But the administration has said – repeatedly and in court – that it has been. When Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport migrants without due process, that law required such a foreign 'invasion' or 'predatory incursion' to make his move legal. And Trump said that's what was happening. 'The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States,' reads the proclamation from Trump. It added that Tren de Aragua's actions came 'both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.' So the White House said Tren de Aragua was acting in concert with the Maduro regime to invade; Caine now says 'state-sponsored folks' aren't invading. Some flagged Caine's comment as undermining Trump's claims of a foreign 'invasion' in Los Angeles. Trump has regularly applied that word to undocumented migrants. But the inconsistency is arguably more significant when it comes to Trump's claims about the Venezuelan migrants. Perhaps the administration would argue that Trump has halted the invasion and it is no longer happening; Caine was speaking in the present tense. Caine did go on to cite others who might have different views. 'But I'll be mindful of the fact that there has been some border issues throughout time, and defer to DHS who handles the border along the nation's contiguous outline,' he said. But if an invasion had been happening recently, it seems weird not to mention that. And if the invasion is over, that would seem to undercut the need to keep trying to use the Alien Enemies Act. The Department of Homeland Security is certainly not in the camp of no invasion. On Wednesday, DHS posted on Facebook an image with Uncle Sam that reads: 'Report all foreign invaders' with a phone number for ICE. When asked about the image and whether the use of the term 'foreign invaders' had been used previously, DHS pointed CNN to a number of posts from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller using terms like 'invade' or 'invaders' when referring to undocumented immigrants. Plenty of Trump administration figures have gone to bat for this claim. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said soon after Trump's proclamation that Tren de Aragua gang members 'have been sent here by the hostile Maduro regime in Venezuela.' Then-national security adviser Michael Waltz claimed Maduro was emptying his prisons 'in a proxy manner to influence and attack the United States.' We soon learned that the intelligence community had concluded Venezuela had not directed the gang. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood by Trump's claim. 'Yes, that's their assessment,' Rubio said last month about the intelligence community. 'They're wrong.' Trump administration border czar Tom Homan has said the gang was an 'arm of the Maduro regime,' and that Maduro's regime was 'involved with sending thousands of Venezuelans to this country to unsettle it.' The question of Venezuela's purported involvement actually hasn't been dealt with much by the courts. A series of judges have moved to block the administration's Alien Enemies Act gambit, but they've generally ruled that way because of the lack of an 'invasion' or 'predatory incursion' – without delving much into the more complex issue of whether such a thing might somehow have ties to Maduro's government. One of the judges to rule in that fashion was a Trump appointee, US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. So the intelligence community and a bunch of judges – including a Trump-appointed one – have rebutted the claim the underlies this historic effort to set aside due process. And now, the man Trump installed as his top general seems to have undercut it too.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stephen Miller Threatened ICE Leaders With a Furious Ultimatum Over Arrest Targets
An irate Stephen Miller threatened senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials with termination unless their offices upped their game and started detaining at least 3,000 migrants a day. The White House deputy chief of staff also warned that leaders of field offices ranking in the bottom 10 percent for migrant arrests were at risk of being fired, NBC News reports, citing unnamed sources. The outbursts from Miller, viewed as the architect behind many of President Donald Trump's most hardline immigration policies, came during a mid-May meeting with ICE officials. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also present, though was reportedly in a calmer mood. Soon after Miller issued his threat, ICE began ramping up its efforts to detain undocumented migrants across the U.S. The plan, dubbed 'Operation At Large,' involved thousands of federal law enforcement officers and special forces, many of whom don't typically assist with immigration, being pulled in to help ICE round up migrants accused of being in the country illegally. The operation has also called for the deployment of about 21,000 National Guard troops, as well as 250 IRS agents who could use tax data to track down immigrants. Trump's push to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history is reportedly sparking friction among federal agencies. FBI agents, who normally steer clear of immigration enforcement and administrative removal orders, are increasingly being tasked with helping ICE arrest undocumented migrants. Teams within the Justice Department working on unrelated matters have also been disbanded and reassigned to focus on immigration-related cases. Federal agencies' intense preoccupation with detaining migrants that is now influencing whether a case is prosecuted at all. In one instance, a U.S. attorney's office dropped a potential federal prosecution involving a dangerous suspect simply because there wasn't a clear immigration angle. The office passed the case to state prosecutors instead. 'Immigration status is now question No. 1 in terms of charging decisions,' an assistant U.S. attorney told NBC News. 'Is this person a documented immigrant? Is this person an undocumented immigrant? Is this person a citizen? Are they somehow deportable? What is their immigration status? And the answer to that question is now largely driving our charging decisions.' In response to reports of Miller's outburst, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: 'Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump's and the American people's mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe.' The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from the Daily Beast.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stephen Miller Explicitly Ordered ICE Raid Home Depots
Stephen Miller explicitly ordered ICE to target Home Depot parking lots to arrest undocumented day laborers, a report alleges. The White House deputy chief of staff gave the order in late May, gloating in a meeting that he could leave ICE's D.C. headquarters and arrest 30 people outside the nearest Home Depot, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Miller, 39, is also said to have reminded top immigration officials they are not just targeting the 'worst of the worst' criminals, but anybody who is in the country illegally—even if that is their only alleged wrongdoing. 'Just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,' he said, according to the Journal. ICE officials appear to have heeded the White House's call. The Journal reported that ICE conducted an immigration sweep at a Home Depot on Friday in a predominantly Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles. The raid was among those that spurred widespread anti-ICE demonstrations and occasional riots in the city, which escalated after President Donald Trump activated the National Guard and deployed Marines against the wishes of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Day laborers are known to use Home Depot parking lots to find work at locations across the country, often waving down contractors or homeowners as they exit the home improvement store. Home Depot has acknowledged the practice, but does not explicitly allow it. Some stores feature signage to make clear that soliciting work is illegal in their parking lots. MAGA influencers have seized on this practice by migrants and are now encouraging ICE to continue targeting Home Depot parking lots. 'I'd like to report the front entrance of @HomeDepot at 5 am,' said Laura Loomer on Wednesday, responding to a promotion for the Department of Homeland Security's tip line to report undocumented immigrants. 'Location: Every Home Depot in the U.S.' Recent Home Depot raids have occurred at a minimum of seven locations in California, according to the Journal, The Guardian, and NBC Los Angeles. This appears to have workers skiddish about finding work in their go-to spot. Martha Arévalo, the executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, told the Journal that Home Depot parking lots in Southern California, once filled with hundreds of willing workers, have dwindled down to a 'handful.' Home Depot spokeswoman Beth Marlowe told the Daily Beast that the Atlanta-based corporation is not working in conjunction with ICE and that it does not receive any advance notice of raids at or near its locations. 'We tell associates to report [raids] immediately and not to engage with the activity for their safety,' she said. 'If associates feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity, we offer them the option to go home for the rest of the day, with pay.' ICE did not respond to emails from the Daily Beast. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Beast in a statement, 'If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported. This is the promise President Trump made to the American people, and the administration is committed to keeping it.' Miller has reportedly orchestrated the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. In the same meeting he reportedly ordered ICE to target Home Depot locations, he also allegedly threatened to terminate officials if their arrest numbers did not rise significantly. Miller told ICE it needed an arrest total at or near 3,000 migrants per day. A plan, dubbed 'Operation At Large,' was implemented shortly after. It saw thousands of federal law enforcement officers and special forces, who don't typically assist with immigration, being activated to help ICE round up migrants accused of being in the country illegally. This supercharging of arrests resulted in several notable mishaps. That included ICE briefly detaining a U.S. Marshal in Arizona by mistake last week.
