Marin County Sheriff must cooperate with immigration on criminal arrests, public safety demands it

Sherman R. Frederick/Properly Subversive

The nuttiest situation in American life today — not to mention here in beautiful Marin County — has gotta be the disconnect we’ve created between local and federal law enforcement on immigrant crime. Decades of flawed thinking coupled with misguided compassion has produced a Laurel and Hardy kind of scenario in which you’d hope — with all the evidence now before us — that a Marin County Supervisor would turn to a Berkeley educated egghead and say:

“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

But of course, it doesn’t happen, even when citizens are brutalized over and over again by people allowed to carry on with criminal behavior in the name of compassion for the plight of illegal immigrants. 

Consider the facts in the latest example of it this disfunction:

1. Sebastian Zapeta, a Guatemalan citizen in the country illegally (above), burned a homeless woman alive on a New York subway train. (There’s video, but we still must say “allegedly.”)
2. ICE served the NYC Department of Corrections with a hold request for Mr. Zapeta. 
3. New York, because it is a Sanctuary City, denied that hold request.

That’s insane. All ICE asks is that New York cops keep Zapeta in jail for later immigration review once his case is adjudicated in court. If for some reason Mr. Zapeta were to be freed from the local charges, NYC would still hold him for ICE to determine whether he should be deported or allowed to go free and pursue proper status in this country. 

Either way, we’d know where Mr. Zapeta is, which is a reasonable course of action in a civilized community. 

Yet, we’ve reached the point in which there is no seamless cooperation between many local law enforcements agencies and immigration agents. This persists even though every day in America hundreds of people illegally in this country are arrested and jailed for crimes.

Have we learned nothing from Jose Ibarra’s case?

Ibarra, an illegal immigrant and a card-carrying Venezuelan gang member (shown at left) was jailed for criminal behavior in New York, but instead of turning him over to ICE, he was set free. He made his way to Georgia where he raped and murdered Lakin Riley.

He’s been convicted and sentenced to life prison. The case became a rallying cry during the 2024 elections, as it gotdamnwell should have.

The argument for shielding illegal aliens from becoming known to federal law enforcement is that this will make illegal alien communities fearful of living open and comfortable lives in America. 

Marin elected officials think that’s compassionate. It’s not because life in the shadows of improper immigration status is no life. 

Look, we gotta pull together as a caring nation to fix this. The start has to come with cooperation between all levels of law enforcement on criminal behavior, no matter your citizenship.

We don’t need to talk about this in theoretical terms. We know this dysfunction absolutely erodes public safety. In fact, it kills people.

Local Marin law enforcement will tell you this if you gave them a truth serum. Sheriff deputies and town cops in Marin should routinely notify ICE when an illegal immigrant is jailed as a suspect in a crime. Treat them fairly, of course. Adjudicate the crime with all due haste, of course. And for goodness sake, put an ICE hold on them so a determination on their immigration status can be reached. Do it by back-channel if you must.

No other sane way to see it.

Read the full column here.