It’s no secret that Democrats love illegal aliens more than their own citizens because they go out of their way to protect the former while ensuring the latter are vulnerable and unprotected. That’s why there are “sanctuary” laws and policies in place in blue cities and states. Nothing could be more obvious.
California, of course, is one of those sanctuary states. There, as in other illegal alien sanctuaries, laws are specifically designed to make federal immigration enforcement impossible — blocking local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE, freeing criminal aliens rather than handing them to federal custody, and in some cases actively pardoning violent offenders to keep them out of deportation proceedings.
But Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, has found the workaround: federal arrest warrants for criminal aliens who have been deported and ‘reoffend’ by reentering the U.S. illegally.
Under “Operation Guardian Angel,” the DOJ doesn’t ask California Democrats to cooperate. It doesn’t rely on ICE detainer requests that sanctuary jurisdictions ignore. It issues federal arrest warrants for criminal illegal aliens already in state custody — giving federal agents the legal authority to walk into those jails and take custody regardless of sanctuary laws. The operation has now transferred hundreds of criminal illegal aliens from California sanctuary jails to federal custody.
The roster of who’s been removed tells you everything about what California’s sanctuary policies were actually protecting. A child molester. A rapist. An accused killer. Domestic violence offenders. These are not the sympathetic cases that sanctuary advocates invoke in press releases. These are the people that Gavin Newsom’s political apparatus was keeping out of federal hands — people whose presence in California communities was a documented danger to the Californians those same politicians claimed to represent.
Essayli declared the operation “a tremendous success” and urged other U.S. attorneys in sanctuary states to adopt the same model. “Even the worst criminal aliens in state custody are frequently released into the community because California’s sanctuary state policies block cooperation with federal law enforcement,” he noted. “These laws effectively render federal immigration detainers meaningless.” The warrant model renders the detainer problem irrelevant.
The mechanics of this are important for conservatives in other sanctuary states to understand. You don’t need local law enforcement cooperation if you have a federal arrest warrant. You don’t need the sheriff’s sign-off. You don’t need the city council’s blessing. A federal judge signs the warrant. Federal agents serve it. The criminal goes to federal custody. California’s sanctuary bureaucracy is bypassed entirely.
This is how you enforce federal law in a state whose leadership has explicitly decided to obstruct it. Not by begging for cooperation that will never come. Not by threatening to withhold funding that courts will block. By going in with the legal authority that supersedes whatever Sacramento has put in state law.
Newsom is currently threatening to prosecute federal officials who try to clean up his state’s election system. His administration tried to buy classified ICE operational details on behalf of his wife’s Syria vacation request. And his sanctuary policies have been actively shielding child molesters and rapists from deportation proceedings for years.
Operation Guardian Angel is the answer to all of it. Other states should be watching. Other U.S. attorneys should be taking notes. The model works. It’s about to be applied everywhere there is a Democrat sanctuary law in effect. Game, set, match, President Trump.
