WINSTON-SALEM – Yet another community in North Carolina will now be subject to a sheriff that is shunning cooperation with federal immigration authorities, advertising his county of jurisdiction as a sanctuary for illegal aliens to feel safe from deportation.
Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough Jr. of Forsyth County said earlier this week that he will end the contract of cooperation with ICE and no longer detain illegal aliens so that federal authorities can process them according to federal law.
From Winston-Salem Journal:
“Kimbrough made his announcement following a rally and news conference by a group supporting a man from Honduras who is being held at the jail following his arrest Monday.
“What that means is the sheriff’s office will no longer house immigration violators,” Kimbrough said at his own news conference outside the jail.
“Currently, the sheriff’s office is not an extension, and will never will be an extension, in this administration, of immigration services,” Kimbrough said. “We are not helping ICE. We have not arrested anyone on immigration violations, nor do we plan on it.
“Nor are we actively looking for immigration violators,” Kimbrough said. “That is not what the sheriff’s office does, nor will we ever do that.””
As such, Sheriff Kimbrough will actively turn a blind-eye to those in the community that have already broken immigration laws, and broken local laws in order to be arrested.
Kimbrough worked for more than a decade with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and has vowed to tackle the opioid crisis. Will the sheriff’s office maintain a cooperative relationship with that federal agency enforcing federal laws? Probably.
So why not cooperate with the immigration authorities that often remove persons involved in illicit drug trades?
The announcement came after a rally,as the article mentions, in support of an illegal immigrant that has been arrested for drug possession. He had also been arrested and convicted of driving while impaired in Gaston County in 2017. He was a felon, so his name was screened and ICE was notified.
Why is such a policy of cooperation problematic? Political considerations seem to cloud the judgement of law enforcement leaders when these policies could actually help them achieve the goals they set out to accomplish when running for sheriff.
How many opioid dealers in Forsyth County may be illegal aliens as well? Would be a good thing for the community of there was some simple agreement to turn drug-peddling criminals over to immigration authorities for deportation and get them out of your communities.
Instead, Forsyth County has just become the latest beacon for illegal aliens, including criminal ones, to seek sanctuary in.
Read more from the Winston-Salem Journal here.
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