Dori: Blood on sanctuary politicians’ hands in Auburn, Bellevue murders

I’ve said it so many times — local officials once again have blood on their hands, because once again we’re seeing sanctuary policy responsible for deaths. This time it’s two Auburn and Bellevue murders.

In April, an 18-year-old was fatally shot at a park in Bellevue, the first murder Bellevue has seen in years. The homicide was determined by detectives to be gang violence.

Carlos Carillo-Lopez, a Guatemalan citizen, first came into contact with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in 2015 when he was just 15, according to Bryan Wilcox, deputy field office director for the local branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He was released to a sponsor, initially, in the state of Texas, but found his way eventually up to the state of Washington, and he has basically been here since 2015” Wilcox told me. “And by all accounts, he’s been involved in significant criminal activity.”

ICE: We could’ve prevented illegal repeat offender from stabbing train rider

Though he’s still a teenager, he has already been arrested several times. Due to sanctuary policies, however, ICE has not always been notified. One of these times was just a few weeks before the Bellevue murder.

“If [the South Correctional Entity] had called us, we would have gone and picked him up, we would have detained him, we would have looked at his criminal activities up until that time and determined if he was a continued risk to the public, and we might have detained them,” he said. “We’d have to weigh all the considerations. But definitely he would’ve come into our custody.”

That means that he very well might have been detained and therefore might not have been able to commit the Bellevue murder.

Carillo-Lopez has been arrested on more than one occasion since the April killing, but the county has not honored ICE’s detainers.

Sanctuary plays a role in another murder

In another murder case out of Auburn this fall, one of two suspects is a man from El Salvador who, like Carillo-Lopez, also came here unaccompanied and illegally as a juvenile a few years ago. At the time, he was released to live with his father in Washington.

He also has racked up a long arrest record in his few years here, and once again, ICE detainers have been ignored.

I truly think that — while the main people responsible for these crimes are the killers — it’s an inescapable fact that our policies contribute to these crimes. Wilcox agrees with me.

“Absent of a lot of sympathetic factors and other issues that we’ve become aware of, the likelihood is, if you’re released into the community of the United States while you’re going through immigration proceedings, and you subsequently start to commit crimes, we’re generally going to consider you a danger to the community,” Wilcox said. “And also you’re not complying with the terms of release by the Department of Homeland Security.”

As these Auburn and Bellevue murders prove, our politicians have decided to put politics above human life. I do not understand how they can live with themselves.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.