Stephen Yang for NY Post
Think a prosecutor’s top job is to lock up criminals? Ha! In New York City, district attorneys think it’s to make sure illegal-immigrant criminals don’t get deported.
No joke: A new report from the House Judiciary Committee warns that Gotham DAs are downgrading charges for illegal-immigrant criminals in order to help them avoid deportation.
It’s utter madness. And a sure way to undermine public safety.
DAs in every borough, the report explains, instruct staff to undertake some form of “immigration-conscious” prosecutions, reducing charges to “non-deportable” offenses or effectively scrapping them altogether.
In The Bronx, DA Darcel Clark tells staff to “pursue alternative charges” to avoid making perps eligible to be removed.
Queens DA Melinda Katz has told her prosecutors “not to get caught up” in the misdemeanor vs. felony labels, when it comes to illegal-immigrant defendants.
She’s also used an “immigration specialist” to help frame “dispositions that will prevent unwanted immigration consequences.”
Even Staten Island DA Michael McMahon has an Immigrant Affairs and Collateral Consequences Unit.
These rules actually instruct ADAs to hide key details of serious offenses — like domestic 𝘢bu𝘴e or firearm use — to shield the thugs.
In all, it not only keeps foreign criminals in America, it guarantees they’ll walk free to commit new crimes.
More, it privileges them: Perps here illegally face lesser charges than one are who are US citizens, or legal immigrants.
Where is the justice in that?
In fact, this madness has already produced horrible injustices, such as the 2020 murder of Maria Fuertes, 92, by Guyanese migrant Reeaz Khan, whom the city freed despite a federal detainer issued after his earlier busts.
“Unfortunately, my grandmother had to be example of why something like this, [these] horrific crimes should never happen,” Fuertes’ granddaughter fumed back then.
The combination of DAs going easy on perps plus the state’s sanctuary laws leave too many Reeaz Khans free to wage mayhem on innocents .
Scheming to thwart federal law is one thing, but it’s unconscionable that DAs sworn to protect the public are instead putting New Yorkers’ lives at risk to do so.
By betraying their core duty, they lose any right to remain in office.
