Attorney General Sessions Delivers Remarks on Sanctuary Policies

Miami, FL

~ Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you Tom, for that introduction. I have great respect for the work you are doing. We have many members of your team here and I want to thank each and every one of you. Thank you. And thank you to all the law enforcement personnel I see out here.

Mayor Carlos Giménez, thank you for your tremendous hospitality and thank you for your commitment to the rule of law and tireless work to keep the people of Miami-Dade safe.

I also want to recognize our acting United States Attorney Ben Greenberg. Your team here has done a fabulous job.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernadez Rundle is here. You have been a great partner in combatting violent crime and I am so pleased to see you.

I’m honored to be in Miami-Dade with all of you today. I’m always so impressed when I visit: the city keeps getting bigger, business is booming, and I recently read that Miami-Dade is one of the safest major jurisdictions in the country.

As you know, this was not always the case. In the 1980s, Miami-Dade was plagued by drugs. Violent crime followed. Police regularly recorded upwards of 500 murders a year. The city seemed to be crumbling.

But the people of Miami-Dade refused to tolerate this level of violence. And last year, Miami-Dade’s homicide count was barely a third of what it was in the 1980s.

How many hundreds of lives were saved in this city because of the proactive, community policing from your police force. It wasn’t easy, but this place has truly earned its nickname today “The Magic City”.

Your success is even more remarkable since violent crime is surging in most places across the country – including a historic rise in the nation’s murder rate of nearly 11 percent.

Miami-Dade is an example of what is possible through hard work, professional policing, and a rededication to the rule of law.

It is proof that the entire nation can do better.

During the last administration, the Inspector General sent 10 letters to jurisdictions that they had reason to believe were not complying with federal immigration law. Last week, we sent a letter to your mayor and today I’m here to announce that Miami-Dade is now in full compliance and eligible for federal law enforcement grant dollars.

This is wonderful news for law enforcement and the citizens of Miami-Dade. It means more money for crime fighting. And it means we are partners in keeping everyone here safe.

Unfortunately, some cities – like Chicago – refuse to follow your example.

In Chicago – a city with almost exactly the same 2.7 million person population as Miami-Dade – more than 433 people have been murdered since the beginning of the year. More than three times as many as Miami-Dade.

Last year, Chicago’s 2.7 million residents experienced more murders than the 12.5 million people who live in New York and Los Angeles – combined. The Chicago Police Department also reported more than 4,300 shooting victims. In the first half of last year, violent crime across the nation increased 5 percent, but in Chicago it surged 24 percent.

The most fundamental duty of government is to ensure the safety and liberty of its people.

Respect for the rule of law has broken down. In Chicago, their so-called “sanctuary” policies are just one sad example.

Every year too many Americans lives are victimized as a result of sanctuary city policies whether it be theft, robbery, drugs, assault, battery, and even murder.

Here’s how it works right now. After the police arrest an illegal alien and charge him with a crime, they fingerprint and book him into their jail.

When federal immigration authorities learn that this criminal alien is in Chicago’s custody, they can issue an arrest warrant and ask the city to either notify them before the criminal is released or to transfer him to federal custody.

But Chicago’s leaders have made this a political issue and direct their police to refuse both requests.

Instead, the police are forced to release the criminal alien back into the community without regard to the seriousness of the crime or how long the rap sheet.

This is a serious problem for the people of Chicago. A few years ago, an alien was arrested and had his license revoked for driving under the influence. Shortly after, he was arrested again for driving with a suspended license.

After Cook County ignored ICE’s detainer request, the alien drove under the influence once again just a few months later and this time struck and killed a skateboarder. Another senseless death caused by a dangerous policy.

Tragically, in another case, an illegal alien was convicted of aggravated domestic battery. ICE lodged an immigration detainer, but again, the county did not honor it.

After his release, that same alien murdered a 15-year-old girl and shot her mother. She was only 15 and she could be alive today if Chicago’s leadership had prioritized her safety over politics.

Sadly, we know Chicago isn’t alone. Just three weeks ago, Sergio Jose Martinez was arrested in Portland, Oregon. Martinez is an illegal alien who has been deported at least 20 times, and police reports show that he was arrested at least 10 times just this year– accused of everything from possessing drugs to stealing a car.

Federal immigration authorities properly lodged a detainer against Martinez just a few months before, asking to be notified when he was set to be released. But authorities in Oregon refused.

According to allegations, Martinez then broke into the home of a 65-year-old Portland woman by crawling through her bedroom window. Once inside, he reportedly forced this woman to the ground, used scarves and socks to blindfold, bind, and gag her, and then raped her and slammed her head into the wooden floor.

How can these politicians hear this story and do nothing?

How can they look her in the eye and tell her they did nothing to stop this from happening? This is not an aberration. It’s too common.

These policies of sanctuary cities do far broader damage to the country than many understand. At its root, it is a rejection of our immigration laws and a declaration of open borders.

It says if you enter the country last week with a criminal record and get to Chicago, we will not even support deporting you even after you commit a serious crime against one of our citizens. This is lawlessness.

And these lawless policies do more than shield individual criminal aliens – they also shelter and protect lethal gangs and transnational criminal organizations like Latin Kings and MS-13.

These predators thrive when crime is not met with consequences. This state of lawlessness allows gangs to smuggle guns, drugs, and even humans, across borders and around cities and communities. Sanctuary jurisdictions provide safe harbor for some of the most dangerous criminals in our country.

That makes a sanctuary city a trafficker, smuggler, or predator’s best friend.

Now, I want to be clear about something: local police are not the problem. They risk their lives each day in service of the law and the people they protect.

The problem is these sanctuary jurisdictions tie our police officers’ hands and endanger federal immigration officers as well when they are forced to pursue these criminal aliens outside of the jails and prisons.

Yet, these sanctuary jurisdictions have the gall to feign outrage when their police departments lose federal funds as a direct result of their malfeasance.

We want to do everything we can to help state and local law enforcement, which is why we have federal grants to cities designed to aid in crime reduction.

But we cannot continue giving federal taxpayer money to cities that actively undermine the safety and efficacy of federal law enforcement and actively frustrate efforts to reduce crime in their cities.

So if voters in Chicago are concerned about losing federal grant money: call your mayor.

The city’s leaders have even gone so far as to claim that these “sanctuary” policies help reduce crime by encouraging illegal aliens to report it when it happens. But no evidence supports this claim.

 

To the contrary, Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest murder investigation clearance rates in the country.

Only in one out of every four murders is a suspect even identified.

Far from making Chicago safer, these policies likely make cooperation with law enforcement more difficult: if there are no real consequences for the criminal, no witness will risk their life to report the crime. That means criminals walk free and victims suffer in silence.

And what does it say to the most vulnerable communities when even the police are unable to help keep repeat violent offenders off their streets?

Rather than acknowledge soaring murder counts or the heartbreaking stories told by victims’ families, Chicago’s mayor has chosen to sue the federal government.

He complains that our focus on enforcing the law would require a “reordering of law enforcement practice in [the city].”

 

But that’s exactly the point! For the sake of their city, Chicago’s leaders need to recommit to policies that punish criminals instead of protecting them. They need to protect their citizens and not the criminals.

Americans – all Americans – have a right to full and equal protection under law.

No one understands this better than the Cuban-Americans here in Miami-Dade.

When they came to America, they saw firsthand that only the rule of law and the equal application of that law can preserve our God-given rights.

They understand that no single person – whether a dictator or a mayor – should determine whose rights are protected and whose are not.

The people of Miami-Dade know that the rule of law guarantees equality and opportunity.

Protecting this guarantee is why the government of Miami-Dade made its decision to work with federal law enforcement, not against us.

And that is critical because it shows that this jurisdiction is serious about protecting its citizens from danger and its law enforcement officers from unnecessary risk.

In fact, the majority of the country believes that all cities should do the same. According to one poll, 80 percent of Americans believe that cities should turn over criminal illegal aliens to immigration officials.

Leaders in jurisdictions like Miami-Dade, Lansing, and Westchester County, New York, believe it too, which is why they have stood up for the people they serve by choosing the rule of law.

So to all “sanctuary” jurisdictions across the country, I say this: Miami-Dade is doing it, and so can you. Work with us to enforce a lawful immigration system that keeps us safe and serves our national interest.

The Department of Justice will not concede a single block or street corner in the United States to lawlessness or crime.

Nor will we tolerate the loss of innocent life because a handful of jurisdictions believe that they are above the law.

I know that Miami-Dade will be an example of the good that comes from following the law.

We have already seen that: the same Independence Day weekend when Chicago suffered more than 100 shootings and 15 homicides, Miami-Dade also had a historic number of shooting deaths – zero.

I hope more jurisdictions follow Miami-Dade’s leadership by choosing to follow the law, because we all want to do the same thing: protect our families and defend our country.

 

So thank you, Miami-Dade.

And to all the law enforcement here—state, local, and federal—I look forward to working with you to do just that. This Department of Justice has your back and you have our thanks.

Thank you, and God bless you.

Chicago Man Arrested for Internet Stalking

A 47-year-old Chicago man was arrested yesterday after being charged with sending threatening and harassing communications to a Hollywood based professional model with a large online following. The arrest was announced today by Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who was joined by Garry F. McCarthy, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart in announcing the arrest.

LUIS F. PLASCENCIA, who resides at 5421 North Lovejoy in Chicago, was arrested at his residence yesterday morning, without incident, by members of the Chicago FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF). PLASCENCIA was charged in a criminal complaint field earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with one count of Interstate Stalking, which is a felony offense.

According to the complaint, beginning in March of this year and continuing until his arrest, PLASCENCIA is alleged to have stalked the female victim, sending her numerous threatening and harassing messages via e-mail and Facebook. Some of the messages indicated that PLASCENCIA possessed detailed personal information about the victim, including her home address and the address of several of her friends and family members. Many of the messages threatened the victim and her family with physical harm and personal embarrassment.

The messages came from numerous e-mail addresses and user names, which were eventually traced back to PLASCENCIA, either to a personal e-mail account at his residence or to public computer terminals in the Chicago Public Library system.

PLASCENCIA appeared before Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim in Chicago yesterday afternoon, at which time he was formally charged. He was ordered held without bond, pending his next court appearance, which is scheduled for June 29th in Chicago. Until then, PLASCENCIA will be held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Chicago. If convicted of the charge filed against him, PLASCENCIA faces a possible sentence of up to five (5) years’ incarceration.

This case was investigated by the Los Angeles office of the FBI and the United States Attorney’s office for the Central District of California.

The Chicago FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF) is comprised of FBI special agents, detectives from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and investigators from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Additional copies of the criminal complaint filed in this case are available from the Los Angeles FBI’s press office.

Boss of Fraudulent Identification Document Ring Based in Chicago’s Chinatown Sentenced to 81 Months in Federal Prison

CHICAGO—The leader of an identification document fraud ring that was based in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood for more than 10 years was sentenced today to nearly seven years in federal prison. The defendant, Jun Yun Zhang, was the boss of an extensive conspiracy and enjoyed most of the profit from an illegal business that provided more than 7,000 customers with fraudulent documents and assisted thousands of them obtain genuine identification cards and driver’s licenses, in alias identities, from the Illinois secretary of state’s office. As part of the illegal business, Zhang sold customers a genuine Social Security card (issued to a third party) and a matching manufactured Chinese passport. Zhang and his workers also paid more than 200 bribes to secretary of state employees to pass customers, who were often unqualified, on the road test for an Illinois driver’s license, while teaching other customers how to cheat on the state’s written driving test. Four former secretary of state employees were among 35 defendants who were charged federally as a result of Operation Paper Mountain, an undercover investigation by the FBI and the Chicago Police Department, which became public in February 2009 when Zhang and others were arrested.

Zhang, 44, a Chinese national who has been in custody since 2009, previously pleaded guilty to passport fraud and aggravated identity theft and was sentenced today to 81 months in prison by U.S. District Judge John Darrah. The judge imposed a mandatory two-year sentence on the identity theft count, which must be served consecutively to the 57 months he ordered on the fraud count.

Zhang’s brother, Jun Yue Zhang, 52, was sentenced yesterday to 61 months in prison by Judge Darrah. The Zhang brothers and 13 other defendants, including other relatives, were charged together in one case before Judge Darrah, with 13 of the 15 pleading guilty. The remaining two defendants are fugitives. One co-defendant, James Howell, a former employee at the secretary of state licensing facility in Bridgeview, was sentenced previously to two years in prison after he pleaded guilty and cooperated in the investigation.

Twenty additional defendants were charged later in related cases. Of the 35 total defendants, 21 have pleaded guilty, four are fugitives, and charges against 10 others remain pending.

During the decade-long conspiracy, thousands of Illinois driver’s licenses and identification cards were issued to individuals using Social Security account numbers with the 586 prefix, which was unusual because it is assigned to individuals in American Samoa, Guam, the Phillippines, and Saipan. In several decades before 2000, the state issued only several hundred driver’s licenses and identification cards to individuals using the 586 Social Security account prefix. The spike was due, in large part, to the illegal document mill operated by Jun Yun Zhang and others.

Jun Yun Zhang and other manufacturers, brokers, and couriers sold fraudulent “identity sets”—ranging in price from $1,200 to $3,500 per set—to predominantly Chinese, Korean, and Indonesian nationals who were smuggled into or were in the United States illegally. The false documents included a counterfeit or altered authentic Chinese passport that was matched to a legitimate Social Security number usually beginning with 586, many of which were originally obtained legitimately by Chinese nationals working temporarily in Saipan. While in Saipan or after these workers returned to China, the Social Security cards were collected and transported to the United States, where they wound up in the possession of the defendants and others. Using the bogus passports containing customers’ actual photos, coupled with a legitimate Social Security number and fabricated proof of residency such as a utility bill, the defendants often accompanied customers to various secretary of state facilities in the Chicago area and assisted them in fraudulently obtaining an authentic Illinois driver’s license or identification card that matched the alias identity on the passport and Social Security card. After obtaining a set of fraudulent documents, customers who were in the country illegally could use them to obtain employment, housing, utility services, credit cards, and bank accounts.

Today’s sentence was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI. The Chicago Police Department was instrumental in the investigation, which was also assisted by the Illinois Secretary of State Inspector General and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven J. Dollear, Matthew Madden and Yasmin Best.

Arrest Made in “Wicker Park Bandit” Investigation

A suspect in a string of as many as 10 bank robberies in and around Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood was arrested late last night, announced Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  Mr. Grant was joined in making this announcement by Garry F. McCarthy, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart.

SIMEON HARRIS, age 27, of 2631 South Indiana, was arrested Tuesday evening, without incident, by members of the Chicago FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF) outside his residence. HARRIS was named in a criminal complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court in Chicago with one count of Bank Robbery, which is a felony offense. HARRIS was charged in the complaint with the January 16 robbery of the North Community Bank branch, located at 448 North Wells Street.

According to the complaint, HARRIS was linked to the January 16 robbery by an eyewitness, who saw him flee after the theft in a maroon-colored SUV with temporary Illinois license plates. A vehicle matching the description given by the witness was impounded by the CPD a few days later, following a traffic stop and drug arrest. Subsequent investigation by VCTF members, including a search of the impounded SUV, developed evidence linking HARRIS to the robbery and the charge announced today.

Though not charged, other robberies attributed to the “Wicker Park Bandit” are as follows:

1.December 13, 2011 - Chase Bank branch, 1700 North Wells

2.December 20, 2011 - North Community Bank branch, 2335 North Clark
3.December 22, 2011 - PNC Bank branch, 4440 North Broadway
4.December 30, 2011 - Chase Bank branch, 1350 North Wells
5.January 6, 2012 - North Community Bank branch, 1555 N. Damen
6.January 6, 2012 - North Community Bank branch, 1600 West Chicago Avenue
7.January 9, 2012 - Chase Bank branch, 1200 North State Parkway
8.January 21, 2012 - Chase Bank branch, 71 West Chicago Avenue
9.January 28, 2012  - Chase Bank branch, 3531 North Western Avenue. 

During all of the robberies, witnesses said that a lone robber entered the bank and approached a teller with a handwritten note asking for cash. He did not show any weapons or make any threats during the robberies and no injuries were reported in any of these incidents.

HARRIS appeared before Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez, earlier today, at which time he was formally charged.  HARRIS was ordered held without bond, pending his next scheduled court appearance. If convicted of the charge filed against him, HARRIS faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

This case was investigated by the Chicago FBI’s Violent Crimes Task Force (VCTF), which is comprised of FBI special agents, detectives from the Chicago Police Department, and investigators from the Cook County Sheriff’s Police.

Additional information about this and other Chicago area bank robberies, including downloadable photographs, is available online at the Bandit Tracker Chicago website, www.bandittrackerchicago.com.

The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Copies of the criminal complaint are available from the Chicago FBI’s press office at (312) 829-1199.