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ICE clashes with uncooperative North Carolina sheriffs. Officials tell them to brace for more raids.

February 9, 2019 | | Print Article
(Video screenshot)

While North Carolina used to be a reliably red state, recent elections have tilted it dangerously close to the radical left. Nothing better exemplifies this than the way in which the state’s democratically elected sheriffs have chosen to respond to the Trump administration’s justified immigration raids.

Following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the state this week that nabbed roughly 200 criminal aliens, the sheriffs of at least three major N.C. counties issued statements pushing back against ICE’s actions, according to Durham station WTVD.

The most scathing criticism came from Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead, who accused ICE of making criminal aliens in his community “afraid of law enforcement.”

“The recent actions of ICE agents are making persons in our community afraid of law enforcement,” he said in a statement. “The decision I made to not honor ICE detainers was in part to help all of Durham’s people feel safe and encourage our residents to feel like they can trust my deputies – and law enforcement in general.”

Learn more about the raids below:

ICE was forced to conduct raids across N.C. in part because of a stubborn refusal by the sheriffs in Durham County, Wake County and Orange County to honor its immigration detainers.

Durham County and Wake County stopped honoring ICE’s detainers after Birkhead and Sheriff Gerald Baker, respectively, were sworn into office two months ago. Both men are Democrats.

Orange County hasn’t been honoring detainers since at least last summer, when the county’s sheriff’s office released a criminal alien who’d been sentenced to time served for a conviction involving the sexual battery of an 11-year-old child.

“Orange County’s refusal to honor ICE’s detainer, or to even notify the agency that it was releasing a convicted sex offender, allowed the subject to pose a public safety threat to North Carolina residents for nearly a month until his capture Monday,” ICE said at the time.

After Durham and Wake Counties joined the anti-ICE bandwagon in December, the agency warned that they’d see “an increase in ICE enforcement activity” unless they chose to comply.

“Any local jurisdiction thinking that refusing to cooperate with ICE will result in a decrease in local immigration enforcement is mistaken,” ICE spokesperson Bryan Cox said at the time in an email statement to Goldsboro station WNCN.

“Local jurisdictions that choose to not cooperate with ICE are likely to see an increase in ICE enforcement activity, as in jurisdictions that do not cooperate with ICE the agency has no choice but to conduct more at-large arrest operations.”

He clearly wasn’t kidding, and Sheriffs Birkhead and Baker are not pleased.

“As sheriff, I’m more concerned about the community folks that reside in this county, and they may be here illegally,” Baker said to WTVD.

“It’s unfortunate that ICE has taken this approach, and ICE has not come to me to have a conversations since I became the sheriff,” Birkhead added.

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Listen:

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

“The decision I made to not honor ICE detainers was in part to help ALL of Durham’s people feel safe and encourage our residents to feel like they can trust my deputies, and law enforcement in general. And, if ICE agents presented a warrant, which is based on probable cause, in my capacity as sheriff I would support such an action,” Birkhead added in his written statement.

Orange County Sheriff Charles S. Blackwood, a Democrat, issued a statement as well, saying, “Our position is and continues to be that if we receive documentation that provides the necessary legal basis to satisfy the Fourth Amendment, we will hold the individual. Absent the necessary legal basis, the individual will be released.”

It’s unclear what the Fourth Amendment, which protects American citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, has to do with the capture and detainment of criminal aliens who’ve violated America’s federal immigration laws.

What’s clear is that the once-reliably red state of North Carolina has being overtaken by Democrat sheriffs who’re clearly more interested in scoring political points for the Democrat Party than in enforcing the law, as noted by social media:

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

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Vivek Saxena
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