Blue state sanctuary laws enabled abolish ICE activist to evade capture, says local DA

Colorado District Attorney George Brauchler is speaking out against activist judges and sanctuary policies in his state that he says enabled abolish ICE activist and illegal immigrant Jeanette Vizguerra to evade capture for over a decade, “making a mockery of the rule of law.”

Colorado law prohibits local and state law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities to remove illegals.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Brauchler, who is the district attorney for Colorado’s 23rd District, said the policies being pushed by Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and the Democratic-controlled legislature have made it so that the state has “embraced illegal immigrants over the laws of the country.”

He said the policies have stunted local and state law enforcement’s ability to keep dangerous illegal criminals off the streets.

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“Local law enforcement all say the ‘right’ thing publicly, and that is, ‘Hey, we’re not arms of the federal government. We don’t work for ICE. That’s not why we were hired.’ But they also say behind the scenes, ‘Dang, we have lost the ability to rid this community of the criminal element when we create these kinds of barriers with ICE.’”

In the case of Vizguerra, who just won a temporary ruling by a federal judge in Colorado guaranteeing ICE cannot deport her while her case is ongoing, Brauchler said that far-left sentiments in the state allowed U.S. immigration laws to be openly flouted.

“Let’s be honest man, Colorado has shifted so far to the pro-illegal immigrant side of things, that it’s created a very permissive environment where you can be here for a long time, be illegal, be even contacted by local law enforcement, and remain free out on the streets,” he said. “So, it’s not a shock to me that there’s a person that is like this in the system.”

He noted that he is sympathetic to Vizguerra having to leave after establishing a life and family in Colorado, but said, “We are either going to be a nation and a state that is governed by laws that we hold each other accountable for, or we’re going to be guided by emotion and whatever the politics of the day are.”

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“That doesn’t seem to me to be the America that was ever intended and not the one I grew up in,” he went on. “We have to admit that the first step for any person who claims to want to be an American cannot be to violate America’s laws. And she fits that bill.”

In addition to the Colorado judge’s ruling, Brauchler also questioned a growing string of other rulings by federal judges inhibiting the Trump administration’s immigration actions across the country.  

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He said the decision of “one single district court judge in a handpicked venue by the people that think they’re going to get the outcome that they want, to issue a nationwide ban that freezes the federal government from border to border, coast to coast, seems to me to be abuse of judicial discretion.”

He pointed to cases such as D.C. Circuit Court Judge James Boasberg, who recently issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of suspected immigrant gang members. By issuing a temporary restraining order rather than a permanent or temporary injunction, Brauchler said that activist judges guarantee their rulings cannot be appealed, effectively freezing the administration from seeking a review by an appellate court.  

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“What judges should do at the federal level is, if they think that something should be enjoined, they should limit that enjoinder to their own jurisdiction and let the rest of this play out across the country,” he said.

Turning back to Colorado, Brauchler emphasized that the “bottom line” is “if we don’t like our immigration laws, well by God change them, Congress, and fix them. … But the answer to ‘I disagree with our federal immigration laws’ cannot ever be — for a people that claim to adhere to the rule of law — it cannot ever be, ‘Well, let’s just ignore them or find a way to thwart them by creating barriers between local law enforcement and the feds.’”

“Our extreme left-wing progressive legislature, dominated by the Democrat Party out here, has a bill they’re waiting to drop that would prohibit every attorney in the criminal justice system, from the judge to the prosecutor, to the defense attorney, to interns in from law school, in my office — no joke — from sharing any information ever about any individual with ICE.”

“That’s where Colorado’s going,” he said. “They’re not making us safer. They’re not making us better. They’re not making us more just. And they’re making a mockery of the rule of law.”