On Sunday's State of the Union show on CNN, host Jake Tapper squeezed a couple of inconvenient truths out of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Those truths are that both drunk driving and grand larceny, if committed by illegal immigrants, are among the criminal offenses which de Blasio and Gotham in general don't believe are serious enough to warrant contacting federal authorities for deportation.
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As seen in a four-minute video at The Hill, it didn't start off well. Tapper wanted to know if New York City was willing to forego federal money if it loses its planned lawsuit against President Donald Trump's sanctuary city-related executive order.
Instead of answering the question, de Blasio claimed that the city's sanctuary city policy goes back to 1989. In other words, it's all former Mayor Ed Koch's and Rudy Giuliani's fault.
His excuse is rubbish.
There is a related 1989 Executive Order from Mayor Koch, but the two-page document only gives police and other agencies leeway to not inform the federal government about an illegal immigrant if the person has not committed a crime or is not under investigation for having done so. Specifically:
Clearly, if the illegal immigrant involved had committed a crime or was the subject of a federal criminal investigation, the city considered itself obligated to inform the feds of that person's illegal status.
The Mayor blathered one about the need for police to be able to speak with the half-million illegals in the city to be able to solve crimes. Nonsense: Koch's order, by making it clear that victims couldn't be turned over to to immigration authorities, already ensured that.
The real problem is that in 2014, under de Blasio, New York City vastly reduced the scope of its perceived obligation to turn in illegals, as explained in coverage at the New York Post, which noted in March of last year how much the city's cooperation had already declined. Also note that, at least according to the Post, New York was not considered a sanctuary city until that law passed:
This NYC law shields illegal aliens who commit crimes
New York’s new status as a “sanctuary” city means few illegal immigrants who break the law are being handed over to federal authorities for deportation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials asked the city Correction Department to detain 944 inmates in city jails between October 2014 and September 2015. But the department transferred only 219 to federal custody — about 23 percent.
In the 12 months before that, ICE made 3,204 requests. City jails transferred 2,016 inmates to ICE custody — or 63 percent, records show.
A new sanctuary law passed by the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio in October 2014 is largely responsible for the massive decline in federal requests and the number of detainees handed over.
The law prevents the city from transferring an immigrant prisoner to ICE custody unless the feds have a warrant, or the suspect is on a terrorism watch list or has committed a violent crime, such as rape or murder.
This is important background for the video segment presented below, where readers will see de Blasio make a shocking admission that he's effectively willing to accept having thousands of illegals who have been caught driving drunk continue to live in the city, and continue to be shielded from immigration officials.
The video begins with de Blasio answering Tapper's question about grand larceny and drunk driving, but only because the CNN journalist had to ask it twice:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
JAKE TAPPER, CNN: Is grand larceny or drunk driving a very minor offense?
BILL DE BLASIO, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Drunk driving that does not lead to another other negative outcome I could define as that.
But look at the list of 170 offenses: anything involving a weapon, anything involving violence. Those areas where we're absolutely cooperating.
And that I think could be a good model, Jake, for how we proceed as a nation. Anyone does a serious crime, I agree, they shouldn’t be here. But the vast majority of people don’t commit any crime, and some, like so much of our population, do some small offense. That's not a reason to tear apart a family, that's not going to do any good.
And listen, again, think about this, 11 to 12 million Americans, if they start feeling like they cannot talk to a police officer, cannot say if they have been a victim of a crime, they can’t go to a police officer to tell them they witnessed a crime, they can’t talk to people at a public hospital or a school for fear of deportation, that going to be corrosive in communities all across the country. It's actually make us less safe day to day in our communities.
TAPPER: Mm-Hmm.
DE BLASIO: That's why it's taking us in the wrong direction.
The number of deaths caused annually by illegal immigrants driving drunk is a statistic which federal and other law enforcement officials appear to have made difficult to obtain. One man's work starts us off on our journey towards estimating that figure with an estimate of traffic deaths caused by unlicensed illegals:
Drew Rosenberg, a 25-year-old student at Golden Gate University, was riding his motorcycle in San Francisco when Roberto Galo struck him on Nov. 16, 2010. In his frenzied effort to flee the scene, Galo ran over his victim twice. The elder Rosenberg got the news no parent should hear from San Francisco General Hospital that night, but what he would learn over the next few years only compounded his bitterness.
As many as 7,500 Americans -- 20 per day -- are killed annually by unlicensed drivers, and Rosenberg calculates that more than half are the victims of illegal immigrants. Now, by testifying before lawmakers, speaking to parents who have been through the same ordeal and posting his research on his nonprofit’s website, unlicensedtodrive.org, Rosenberg is shedding light on a frightening number not readily available from government sources.
Estimating "more than half" as 3,800, the question then becomes what percentage of those illegals were drunk or impaired. If it's same as for all traffic deaths, the answer for 2014 was 31 percent, which would translate to roughly 1,200 deaths (rounded to the nearest 100), many of which would have been prevented if the driver involved was previously cited for drunk driving and subsequently deported.
Thanks to their failure to treat drunk driving as a crime justifying deportation (along with driving without a license, which is not available for an illegal who lives in the city; only out-of-state licenses obtained by illegals are considered acceptable to permit driving), Bill de Blasio and New York City are doing their outrageous part to keep that annual national fatality figure in four digits.
Finally, since they didn't discuss it further, it would appear that an illegal immigrant who engages in serial car break-ins, a form of grand larceny (as well as burglary), doesn't need to worry about being deported if caught. Good grief.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
