Republican senators deride sanctuary policies, U.S. Marshals Service immigration proposal

In a letter to the Director of the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) last week, a dozen Republican senators critiqued an alleged policy proposal that conservative media said would cause illegal immigrants to be released into the United States before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could arrest them.

“We are deeply concerned to learn that the U.S. Marshals Service is even considering adopting a policy where it fails to cooperate with a fellow federal law enforcement entity,” the senators wrote. “The partnership between USMS and ICE is critical to ensure that dangerous, criminal aliens are detained and deported. Preventing USMS from communicating with ICE would be a dereliction of federal immigration enforcement, and we strongly discourage you from proceeding with this proposed policy.”

Supposedly, the new policy would apply even if ICE issued a detainer request asking USMS to hold said immigrants. While cities and states have undertaken sanctuary policies and refused cooperation with ICE in the past, this would be new territory for USMS.

However, the senators raised particular concerns over immigrants with criminal records, citing CBP figures showing more than 9,000 criminal immigrants arrested this year.

“Since President Biden took office, CBP has had 3 million encounters with illegal immigrants at our southern border, the senators wrote, citing an August 2022 CBP report. “Further, there continues to be a growing number of ‘gotaways’ entering the country due to the chaos at the border.”

In their letter, U.S. Sens. John Hoeven (ND), Thom Tillis (NC), John Cornyn (TX), Mike Lee (UT), Mike Braun (IN), Jim Inhofe (OK), Steve Daines (MT), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Tom Cotton (AR), James Risch (ID), Kevin Cramer (ND), and James Lankford (OK) all urged USMS Director Ronald Davis to answer their questions by Sept. 27, 2022. These included what changes to USMS policy were being considered regarding ICE detainer requests, if a policy was contemplating ending cooperation with ICE, who was in charge of reviewing such policy shifts, if there had been any consultation between USMS and federal law enforcement partners, and if any data had been collected to justify embracing sanctuary policies.