Sanctuary cities across the United States have protected tens of thousands of criminal illegal aliens from federal immigration law, an expert witness told Congress on Wednesday.
In testimony to the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) President RJ Hauman said that from Oct. 1, 2022, to Feb. 6, 2025, sanctuary cities shielded more than 25,000 criminal illegal aliens by refusing to hand them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as requested.
“… in more than 1,400 instances the jails failed to give adequate notification to ICE to take custody of the aliens,” Hauman said of the figures, published by the Center for Immigration Studies.
More than half of those declined ICE detainers — some 52 percent — occurred in the sanctuary state of California, where more than 13,000 criminal illegal aliens were protected.
In Los Angeles, California, the state’s sanctuary policy ensured that six illegal aliens with convictions or charges for homicide were released from jail instead of being turned over to ICE agents.
This week, 43-year-old illegal alien Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino was arrested in Los Angeles County, California, for the murder of 13-year-old Oscar “Omar” Hernandez, whose body was found in a ditch.
Garcia-Aquino had been accused in February of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in Los Angeles but was not turned over to ICE agents.
“The American people spoke loud and clear in November. It’s time for Congress to wake up, shift into Trump gear, and act decisively — end sanctuary cities for good and launch mass deportations now,” Hauman told the subcommittee. “Every day we delay, we roll the dice on the next preventable tragedy, the next innocent life lost to a criminal alien we could have sent packing.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
