We should applaud ICE, Maricopa County officials for partnering on immigration

Over the past week, we have been discussing the kerfuffle between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone.

It’s very key to understand that we are not dealing with black and white legalities — we’re dealing with legal gray areas.

So when I said that Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and Penzone looked at the legalities of ICE courtesy detainers and decided to stop the practice, I wasn’t saying that the practice itself was black-and-white illegal. It was a gray area.

I want to address those that are screaming and hollering that Penzone is making Maricopa County less safe by releasing illegal immigrants that ICE hasn’t had the time to transfer.

The reason why we should stop screaming and start celebrating is that we finally have two elected officials from two sides of the political aisle working toward the best interests of Maricopa County.

You need to understand that the sheriff’s office is not releasing illegal immigrants that are suspected of murder or violent crimes. Most of these people are in for misdemeanors and are suspected of being here illegally.

Montgomery and Penzone looked at the rest of the nation. They wanted to see how many of these courtesy detainer cases ended up in court. They wanted to see what the win-loss record was for those cases.

They found that it is mostly a losing effort to fight a detainer case.

So, in the best interest of Maricopa County, they decided to find a solution that would benefit the county, the sheriff’s office and ICE. They found it.

MCSO is now allowed to transfer detainees to ICE within the system, which seems like a reasonable and common sense solution to me.

Now that does not mean that these cases will not end up in court. If they do, we can then evaluate that solution to see if it’s working or not.

You see, it’s our immigration SYSTEM that is to blame here. It is the SYSTEM that is being taken advantage of by illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration will not stop until we fix our own system. Not a lot of people that can argue with that.

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