Charles Marino, who served as DHS Senior Law Enforcement Adviser under the Obama administration, said Monday that sanctuary city policies barring local police from working with ICE are contributing to a rise in deadly use-of-force incidents involving federal agents.
Speaking on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” Marino argued that when state and local law enforcement are kept off the scene of ICE operations, confrontations become more dangerous because the people being approached have no way of knowing who is engaging them.
“This creates many of the dangerous situations that we see unfolding here, where we’ve got deadly use of force being used more and more, because there’s no uniformed presence, there’s no deterrence, there are no marked police vehicles, for example, so, many of these subjects aren’t sure in the first place who’s engaging them from the beginning,” Marino said.
Host Elizabeth Vargas raised the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, along with other shootings in Maine and Texas, prompting Marino to note that the locations she cited, including one in Austin, are all sanctuary cities.
“So, what’s happening, Elizabeth, is, you don’t have state or local law enforcement on the scene when these incidents are actually occurring, because they’re prevented by local politicians from working alongside ICE, even though they may not be directly enforcing immigration law, they’re not there on the scene at all,” Marino said. “These are unmarked cars, unmarked agents, and so, they’re not really sure, it’s creating the perfect storm. Now these cities want to be part of the investigation, but since they’re not on the scene and they’re not working with ICE, they really don’t have any equities in being part of the investigation.”
Marino also said there is “a lack of transparency” from the federal government regarding uses of force.
