Newsom Said ICE Can’t Have California’s Illegal Alien Criminals — Trump’s DOJ Said ‘Hold My Beer’

Under “Operation Guardian Angel,” the DOJ doesn’t ask California Democrats to cooperate. It doesn’t rely on ICE detainer requests that sanctuary jurisdictions ignore. It issues federal arrest warrants for criminal illegal aliens already in state custody — giving federal agents the legal authority to walk into those jails and take custody regardless of sanctuary laws. The operation has now transferred hundreds of criminal illegal aliens from California sanctuary jails to federal custody.

The roster of who’s been removed tells you everything about what California’s sanctuary policies were actually protecting. A child molester. A rapist. An accused killer. Domestic violence offenders. These are not the sympathetic cases that sanctuary advocates invoke in press releases. These are the people that Gavin Newsom’s political apparatus was keeping out of federal hands — people whose presence in California communities was a documented danger to the Californians those same politicians claimed to represent.

Essayli declared the operation “a tremendous success” and urged other U.S. attorneys in sanctuary states to adopt the same model. “Even the worst criminal aliens in state custody are frequently released into the community because California’s sanctuary state policies block cooperation with federal law enforcement,” he noted. “These laws effectively render federal immigration detainers meaningless.” The warrant model renders the detainer problem irrelevant.