CV NEWS FEED // During his successful campaign four years ago, Democratic Athens-Clarke County Sheriff John Williams said he would refuse to “create a culture of fear” by cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Clarke County is the location of the University of Georgia (UGA) campus where illegal Venezuelan immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra is suspected to have brutally murdered nursing student Laken Riley last week.
In 2020, Williams discussed his proposed immigration policy if elected sheriff.
“It is not my intention to cooperate with detainers,” he said to a reporter. “If we’re … antagonizing people because they are undocumented … then they build that fear in them.”
“Then they’re not likely to come to us, not only when we need their help, but when they need our help,” Williams said. “That’s not something we’ll be doing. We won’t be doing any type of round-ups. We won’t be [contributing] to that culture of fear.”
Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-GA, posted a 2020 video of Williams explaining his position to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.
Refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a hallmark of cities and other jurisdictions labeled as “sanctuaries” for migrants.
According to Democratic Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz, neither his city nor Clarke County is a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, however. Girtz noted that Georgia’s Republican trifecta banned such jurisdictions in the state.
Clarke County is one of the bluest counties in Georgia. The same year Williams was elected, the county gave over 70% of its vote to then-candidate Joe Biden – the second-highest proportion of any county in the state outside the Atlanta area.
The county is almost entirely coterminous with the city of Athens, hence Williams’ title as Athens-Clarke County Sheriff.
>> BIDEN RESPONDS TO MURDER OF UGA STUDENT BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT <<
Critics of lenient immigration policies hold that New York City’s “sanctuary” status is to blame for Riley’s killer “slipping through the hands” of the city’s police last summer.
The New York Post reported Monday that the alleged murderer “was arrested in Queens on Aug. 31 and charged with endangering a child — but was cut loose before immigration officials could file a request to ask local cops to hold him in custody.”
CatholicVote previously reported that “affidavits for Ibarra’s arrest released Tuesday reveal grisly details of Riley’s murder.”
The affidavits show that the killer “commit[ted] the offense of aggravated battery when he maliciously cause [sic] bodily harm to another by seriously disfiguring [Riley’s] body or a member thereof by disfiguring her skull.”
“The affidavit does not identify the weapon which the suspected murderer used to beat Riley,” CatholicVote added.
>> CORRELATION: VENEZUELA’S VIOLENT CRIME DROPPED AS U.S. ILLEGAL MIGRATION SPIKED <<
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