In Connecticut, some illegal aliens – an illegal alien being
a non-citizen who has illegally entered the country and therefore is not,
according to national and state laws, a lawful immigrant – commit crimes and
remain un-deported.
Such was the case with Jean Jacques, a Haitian who entered
the country illegally and later was arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Jacques spent seventeen years in Connecticut prisons and was supposed to be
remanded on release to ICE, so that he might be deported. The deportation never
occurred for reasons that remain fuzzy.
On his release from prison, Jacques murdered a young girl, Casey Chadwick,
stabbing her to death fifteen times and depositing her body in a closet where
she was discovered by her boyfriend. As of this date, we do not know how
Jacques was permitted to fall between the cracks. ICE claims that Haiti disputed
Jacques’ citizenship or did not have available the paperwork necessary to show
that he was a Haitian citizen. Connecticut’s deportation process requires the
state to hold deportable felons who have completed their sentences for no
longer than 48 hours before turning them loose on the general public. We simply
do not know in any detail whether Connecticut made strenuous efforts to assure
Jacques’ deportation. We do know that the usual process - deportation upon
release for serious felons -- failed in his case, with murderous consequences.
And Jacques is not alone. According to a recent Fox News report,
a “Bridgeport man accused of killing his girlfriend and sparking
an Amber Alert when he took off with their 6-year-old daughter, was
previously deported, immigration officials said.
"’Oscar Obedio
Hernandez, a citizen of El Salvador, was issued a Final Order of Removal by an
immigration judge on Oct. 29, 2013,’ said spokesman Shawn Neudauer. ‘He was
removed from the United States by ICE officers in Hartford, CT on Nov. 27,
2013. He has prior felony convictions from 2002 for assault and threatening, as
well as several misdemeanor convictions. ICE has placed an immigration detainer
with the Bridgeport [Connecticut] Police Department.’”
An advisory letter sent recently by Governor Dannel Malloy
to towns and schools concerning illegal aliens in Connecticut strongly suggests
that municipalities and school administrators need not co-operate with the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. This is somewhat misleading.
On the contrary, the federal government’s Enforcement and Removal Office (ERO),
the nation’s primary deportation force, published on September 22nd 2016
a disclosure describing a deal it was in the process of securing with
Connecticut, according
to a story in The Verge.
It is the mission of ERO, a sub-agency of ICE, “to identify, arrest,
and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to
public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or
otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border
control efforts. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) upholds America's
immigration laws at, within and beyond our borders through efficient
enforcement and removal operations.”
Since the mission of
ERO is entirely dependent upon the identification of illegal aliens, state data
is critically important to ICE’s deportation efforts. “Without access to the system, ICE officers
will not be able to locate and track illegal aliens,” the document discloses. “No other organization maintains data
necessary to complete this task efficiently but the State of Connecticut’s
Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.”
By supplying to ICE
data necessary for the apprehension of illegal aliens, Connecticut IS assisting
in the apprehension of illegal aliens, much to the dismay of groups who may
have been pacified by Malloy’s communique to municipalities and educational
facilities in the state. “The
COLLECT database,” Malloy spokesperson Chris Collibee told The Verge in an
email, “is a shared database among local, state and federal agencies and is
essential to protecting the residents of our state. Every state participates in
the sharing of information with other law enforcement agencies, including
federal authorities.” Malloy,
said a spokesman, “has met with a number of immigrant groups since President
Trump took office and is working on additional avenues to ensure that the
rights of all residents are protected – regardless of immigration status.”
Appearing on Fox News Channel, Malloy told Tucker Carlson “The federal government has its obligations.
We should not be expending local dollars, state dollars, to do the government’s
job.”
But, of course, it
was and is the state’s job to expend state dollars to ensure the safety of
Connecticut citizens from such illegal aliens as Jacques and Hernandez.
Connecticut has spent quite a few dollars keeping Jacques in prison. And had
Connecticut not been constrained by a statute that requires the state to
release violent convicted illegal alien offenders within 48 hours from a
release date, Casey Chadwick’s mother, Wendy Hartling, would not be wondering why Malloy thinks he is exempt from federal laws designed to prevent such
murders as have been committed by Jacques and Hernandez.
Asked to comment on
the incident between Hernandez and ICE, Malloy responded through spokeswoman
Kelly Donnelly, “Our local laws are designed to protect our residents and also
ensure that those in harm's way feel safe seeking help from law enforcement.
That's why convicted violent felons are detained for deportation under our
state laws that the governor has consistently and strongly supported."
Really? Does anyone believe that closer cooperation between ICE and law enforcement agencies in Connecticut would have made the Jacques and Hernandez murders more likely?
Comments