NY’s release of thousands of dangerous illegal immigrants only boosts risks — for ICE and the public

Gov. Kathy Hochul claims New York helps the feds catch illegal-immigrant criminals, yet the state has sprung 7,000 killers, sexual predators and other horrors just since January without even notifying ICE; how is that helping?

State and local “sanctuary” policies shouldn’t protect these goons, period.

Refusing ICE detainers, and so forcing the feds to go after these menaces in the community, clearly creates needless risks for law enforcement and innocent civilians.

Per Homeland Security data, New York has released thousands of perps who account for 29 homicides, thousands of assaults and hundreds of weapons offenses, drug crimes, sexual predations, burglaries and more.

Yet authorities freed them anyway, thanks to sanctuary laws and policies that stop courts and cops from cooperating with the feds.

“Virtually all Americans agree that people like this should be swiftly removed from the United States when they leave New York’s custody and not be returned to our streets to wreak havoc on law-abiding citizens,” fumes Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in a letter to state Attorney General Letitia James.

What a no-brainer: No one wants foreigners who commit horrific crimes here cut loose.

No one who enters illegally has a preemptive right to remain in-country, and those who attack anyone on US soil should booted in a New York minute.

Yet (in a trend compounded by the state’s cashless-bail laws and softie judges) New York authorities keep springing truly villainous border-hoppers:

• New York prosecutors charged Jose David Hernandez Hernandez with rape, strangulation and assault; despite an ICE detainer, he was turned loose anyway.

• Anderson Smith Satuye Martinez, a Crip convicted of assault and later arrested again for criminal possession of a weapon and a controlled substance, was sprung via cashless bail, also despite a detainer.

• In January, DHS charges, the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office refused to honor a federal detainer and warrant for Jesus Romerio Hernandez, who’d been kicked out of the country six times and served 179 days behind bars for attacking an Ithaca police officer with a machete.

ICE eventually picked up all three of these guys, but others remain in the wind.

And forcing agents to confront thugs on the streets creates a far more dangerous situation than a simple courthouse, jail or prison handover.

Hochul should repeal, or at least soften, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2017 executive order barring state employees from giving the feds info “for the purpose of federal civil immigration enforcement, unless required by law.”

It even bans asking people about their immigration status “unless investigating such individual’s illegal activity.”

Hochul boasts that she’s turned over 1,300 jailed “noncitizens” to ICE (all of 325 a year on average), but Lyons notes that thousands of criminal illegal immigrants are in state custody.

He says detainers are out for 7,113 of them (a different list from the 7,000 the state’s released!) whose rap sheets include 48 homicides, 717 assaults, 152 weapons violations and 260 sexual-predator offenses, among other crimes.

He’s demanding New York let ICE arrest the 7,113; it plainly should.

Bad enough that the state springs so many violent citizens; releasing menaces who shouldn’t even be in in the country is beyond lunacy.