ICE Blasts Wake County ‘Sanctuary Sheriff’ For Releasing Illegal Alien Sex Offender Despite Detention Requests

RALEIGH – The issue of law enforcement entities wantonly releasing illegal aliens arrested for other crimes is, plain and simple, an issue of public safety. Friday federal immigration officials excoriated the Wake County Sheriff for needlessly endangering public safety by refusing to hold on to a convicted sex offender for deportation, and instead releasing the sex offender right back into the community.

“This is yet another example of a clear public safety threat being released into Wake County rather than into ICE custody due to the current sheriff’s policy on ICE non-cooperation,” John Tsoukaris, interim director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Atlanta, said in a statement.

So who did Sheriff Gerald Baker release back into our neighborhoods, when he could have easily let federal authorities enforce immigration law?

His name is Furmencio Miranda-Cortazar, 45, and he was convicted in June of two counts of sexual battery involving a 13-year-old. He was sentenced to consecutive 150-day jail terms and was ordered to register as a sex offender and pay $3,000 to a a child advocacy group, records show.

Because he had already been held for 11 months behind bars awaiting his day in court, Miranda-Cortazar was given time-served credit and walked right out of the jail a free man that same day. Except, all the while, ICE was asking the Wake County sheriff to hold him, because they knew he was an illegal alien in violation of federal immigration law and, considering his crimes, needed to be deported immediately.

But the Sanctuary Sheriff wants to make sure illegal immigrants feel comfortable in Wake County, and this child molester was back out on the streets. It took ICE three months to track him down, but luckily they did. Miranda-Cortazar was arrested last weekend and now awaiting a deportation hearing.

Unless voters stand up to say enough is enough, and demand that local law enforcement cooperate with federal authorities to get dangerous illegal aliens out of our communities as expeditiously as possible, these risks to public safety will keep happening. All emanating from those charged with enforcing the law and ensuring public safety.

“The Wake County sheriff’s continued decision to refuse cooperation with ICE serves as an open invitation to aliens who commit criminal offenses that Wake County is a safe haven for persons seeking to evade federal authorities, and residents of Wake County are less safe today than last year due these policies,” Tsoukaris went on to say.

Even the Wake County District Attorney who agreed to this man’s plea deal, is herself pleading for law enforcement to “use all the tools available” to them to ensure public safety:

“We are interested in protecting the public, and those of us who have been elected and sworn to uphold the law and protect the public need to find some way to make sure people who are a threat to public safety, that we are using all the tools that are available.”

Not only is Sheriff Gerald Baker of Wake County, and a handful of other sheriffs, not utilizing all the tools available to him, he is ignoring the tools on purpose for pure political reasons at the expense of public safety.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a clarifying state law that spelled out why law enforcement is required to cooperate with ICE and mechanisms to enforce such cooperation? Oh yeah, there is; the General Assembly passed such a bill months ago only to have Governor Cooper veto it. The governor asserted the bill was ‘partisan pandering,’ while he blatantly pandered to his partisan base by vetoing it.