by Nick Givas
New York City Democratic Councilman Robert Holden said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents should be allowed to make arrests in and around state courthouses, without a signed warrant.
Holden was responding to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s support for the Protect Our Courts Act, which would bar ICE agents from apprehending illegal immigrants without authorization from a judge.
“We want to actually deport the criminals, I guess, right? I mean that’s what we’re trying to do,” Holden said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends.”
“ICE, that’s their job, along with stopping drug trafficking and you know all sorts of other nasty things,” he said. “New York’s already thrown ICE out of the jails. So I mean they should be in the jails, actually looking up the people that are obviously committing these crimes. Do we want to import criminals? Is that what we want to do in the United States?”
The New York Office of Court Administration issued new guidelines in April, preventing federal agents from making arrests in and around the courthouse.
Holden directly criticized Cuomo for supporting the measure and accused the New York governor of pandering to voters for political reasons.
“He used to be conservative. He changed completely. He’s now way over to the left and he’s pandering, obviously,” he said.
He also said it’s unacceptable for the city to be spending millions of dollars on protecting the rights of illegal immigrants who’ve broken the law.
“It’s getting worse. We have thousands of people coming in illegally to this country, committing crimes, many of them. And it’s gotten to a point where New York City — we’re spending $50 million on protecting, on giving legal rights and attorneys to undocumented,” Holden said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
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Nick Givas is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Nick on Twitter.
Photo “Robert Holden” by Robert Holden.
