If Harris Wins, Criminal Immigrant Gangs Win Too * WorldNetDaily * by Betsy McCaughey

From New York to Chicago to the Denver suburbs, gangs of immigrants are mugging, raping, robbing stores, running brothels next to elementary schools, and threatening apartment dwellers with guns to take over condos, all without fear of deportation. The gangs are turning neighborhoods into hellholes.

Blame it on the insane “sanctuary” laws.

The word “sanctuary” sounds charitable. Don’t be fooled. It doesn’t mean the oppressed are welcome. It prohibits police from sharing arrest information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so that agency can detain and deport illegal aliens arrested for violent crimes.

Sanctuary laws protect criminals from deportation. Eleven states and some 600 cities and towns, many of which are run by Democrats, have them. Because of these laws, immigrants who break the law go through a revolving door of justice and back onto the streets to strike again.

Americans have a choice: Presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged Saturday to work with Congress to ban asylum jurisdictions.

The other choice is Vice President Kamala Harris. While she has apparently taken a vow of silence about her policy positions, her record shows that San Francisco residents have died because of her policies on immigrant crime when she was the city’s district attorney.

In 2008, Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, murdered a man and his two sons. Before the triple murder, Ramos had a history of juvenile arrests for assault and attempted robbery. If San Francisco police had cooperated with federal immigration authorities, Ramos might have been deported instead of being released to kill.

It’s a similar story for Rony Aguilera, an illegal immigrant from Honduras who killed Ivan Miranda. He had had several run-ins with the police before, but was still in San Francisco, ready to kill.

A New York Times article published Sunday claims that “Harris cracked down on violent criminals” but conveniently omits Ramos, Aguilera and their victims.

As a U.S. senator in 2017, Harris voted against a bill that would have increased penalties for criminals who repeatedly enter the country illegally after being deported and commit more crimes.

When Harris launched her first presidential campaign in 2019, she filled out an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire arguing that local law enforcement “should not act as federal immigration agents.”

She also wrote that as attorney general, she told California law enforcement “they don’t have to comply with ICE detentions,” meaning they could ignore federal requests to hold immigrant suspects for deportation.

These same policies are now causing migrant crime to skyrocket. Seven Colorado counties in the grip of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua prison gang are suing to repeal asylum laws that prohibit local police from working with ICE to deport gang members.

New York’s asylum laws have allowed the same Venezuelan gang to set up headquarters in migrant shelters across the five boroughs and terrorize the population without fear of deportation.

Victims of crime have their own woke politicians to thank.

Mayor Eric Adams has called for changes to the city’s laws. But the far-left City Council isn’t budging.

On Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives introduced a bill to cut off federal aid for migrants from sanctuary areas. In outrageous fashion, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., opposed it, claiming it would “scapegoat immigrants.” That’s partisan nonsense. Police estimate that as many as 75 percent of arrests for assault and robbery in Midtown Manhattan — Nadler’s district — are of recently arrived migrants.

On Saturday, Trump pledged to “find and arrest any gang member who is being harbored illegally.” That’s a tall order, but a start is allowing local police to cooperate with ICE.

The sanctuary laws should be abolished.

Trump tried that in 2017 via executive order, cutting off funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, but faced a series of legal challenges from blue-state politicians and a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that only Congress, not the president, can set conditions on the spending of federal money. If Trump wins in November, he plans to sidestep legal hurdles by asking Congress for help. The election will determine whether that strategy can succeed.

One thing is for sure: if Kamala wins, the gangs win. As border czar she let them in, and as president she would protect them from deportation.

Under a Harris presidency, you can count on locking your doors, holding onto your wallet, and walking around your neighborhood on guard—until it’s no longer passable.