During a House Judiciary Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) spoke about local law enforcement
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I said in my opening, there are a lot of reasons why states and localities have adopted policies to leave immigration enforcement to federal government where it belongs.
00:11For some, it's about fostering trust with local communities. When immigrant communities know that calling 911 won't result in deportation for themselves or a family member,
00:21they are actually more willing to report and help law enforcement solve crimes, which makes all of us safer.
00:26For others, an important factor is legal liability. Courts all over the country, just to counter what my good colleague from Arizona said,
00:36have ruled that when local law enforcement complies with civil immigration detainer requests, and to be clear, an immigration detainer is a request,
00:46and continues to detain someone pursuant to a detainer when they otherwise would have been released,
00:52it's actually an unlawful detention, and it's a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
00:58So, Sheriff Wagner, I want to thank you again for being here and for the work that you do to support your community,
01:03and I believe you when you say you want to keep all of your residents in Adams County safe.
01:09You can just give me simple yes or nos to this.
01:12At any time since 2019, has the Adams County Sheriff's Office given the federal government personal information
01:20of any Adams County residents, like fingerprints, dates of birth, home addresses, or driver's license numbers?
01:31Just turn your mic on, Sheriff.
01:34We do a program called Stone Garden.
01:35So, just a yes or no is fine.
01:38Do you give, it's a simple question, do you give the federal government personal information of Adams County residents,
01:46like fingerprints, dates of birth, home addresses, and driver's license numbers?
01:50I'm not aware of fingerprints, but I do believe we give public information to those people.
01:56And how often has your office done that?
02:00It depends on what you're talking about.
02:01You want yes and no answers, or do you want me to explain?
02:03Well, in this one, I'm asking you if you have numbers, numbers for that.
02:06I don't have numbers, but we do a Stone Garden program through the Border Patrol, which is funded through the state as well.
02:12Okay.
02:13And at any time since 2019, has the Adams County Sheriff's Office held people beyond their release date
02:20in order to facilitate their pickup by civil immigration enforcement officers?
02:25Not that I'm aware of.
02:26So, you're following the Keep Washington Working Act in that way, and that's good to hear.
02:35I want to go on to some questions for Major Franklin.
02:39Let me turn to you.
02:40One of the studies that I submitted found that mandatory information sharing between local police and ICE
02:46led to a 16% increase in crime against Hispanics.
02:51And let me be clear, that 16% increase means 1.3 million more crimes.
02:58Can you help us understand this statistic and why jurisdictions with community trust policies in place experience less crime
03:06and why their residents feel safer?
03:09Sure.
03:11Yes.
03:12So, to be effective, a good part of my career was in criminal investigation for quite a few years.
03:18And we first need to get people to report crimes before we can even begin to investigate them.
03:26And when there's no trust between the police and the community, many people will not even report crimes.
03:34And this hasn't just become evident with the immigrant community.
03:38I grew up in West Baltimore, and I experienced times in my neighborhood where we really had trust issues.
03:45Many of my friends, many people that I knew would not even report the crime of a robbery, of being a victim of a crime.
03:54And then we need witnesses.
03:56Once we begin to investigate a crime, we need witnesses.
04:00So, you have to have that trust that we, the police, are going to do the right thing.
04:05And in the immigrant community, if they believe, just believe, that their immigration status is going to be questioned,
04:12or maybe that of another family member, or that of a community member which they are friends with,
04:18they're not going to cooperate with us.
04:21We've seen this time and time again.
04:23But when you can establish that trust, you see, we cannot be effective in solving crimes.
04:31And most of the people who commit to violence, it's a very small number.
04:35If we can get them, if we can focus on them, get them convicted, charged convicted, then we have a great chance of reducing crime.
04:41I just have a few seconds left here, but jurisdictions that adopted sanctuary policies experienced a 52% to 62% reduction
04:48in the domestic homicide rate for Hispanic women.
04:51Does that track with your experience as a law enforcement officer and jurisdictions with those policies?
04:57Yes.
04:57As creating the first domestic violence unit in the Maryland State Police,
05:02as being the president of Turnaround Incorporated,
05:04which was about domestic violence in Baltimore City, shelter services, and counseling services?
05:10Yes.
05:11Those numbers are very familiar to me.
05:13And there's a great report out, I believe it's...
05:16Time's expired.
05:17Usually the witness can answer the finished answer.
05:19Mr. Tiffany.
05:21I think it was Mr. Chair.
05:22The answer was yes.
05:23It was a yes or no question.
05:24It was a yes or no question, and he's quite a...