Denver Mayor: ‘Doesn’t Make Sense’ to Say Blocking Access to Jails Leads to More Raids, We Won’t Honor Detainers

During an interview with Denver’s 9News on Wednesday, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stated that “It doesn’t make sense” for Border Czar Tom Homan to argue that sanctuary cities failing to give access to jails and courthouses will lead to more community raids and collateral arrests, and that while they’ll inform ICE if they are releasing violent criminals, under state law, they won’t cooperate with ICE detainers.

Johnston said that the city would “coordinate” and inform ICE when they’re releasing someone who is a violent criminal so ICE can apprehend and deport them and that the city’s police would work with ICE if they were both looking for the same person.

Host Kyle Clark then asked, “Trump’s Border Czar, Tom Homan, says if so-called sanctuary cities do not allow access by ICE agents to jails and courthouses, secure environments, then that means more raids in the community, more collateral arrests of people who are just civil violators of immigration law and that’s what cities are going to get if they don’t allow the access. Did that logic make sense to you when he talks about it like that?”

Johnston responded, “It doesn’t make sense. But I think this is why Denver has the right, commonsense approach, is we are — there are some cities who will say, we have a violent criminal, we’re releasing him, we won’t even tell ICE. What we do say is if ICE’s target is to pick up violent criminals that we have in our jail system, we can make it easy for them to do that and we will do it without handing someone over in custody. The state law says we don’t honor what’s called a detainer.”

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