Keeping America Safe

Yesterday The Attleboro Sun Chronicle posted an article about a recent Massachusetts court case involving the detaining of illegal aliens who had committed crimes.

The article reports:

A federal appeals court has handed Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson a victory in his effort to keep criminal immigration detainees behind bars.

The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston last week denied a release petition filed by immigration activists on behalf of five inmates.

The inmates are U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees being held at the Bristol County House of Corrections in Dartmouth.

The article reports some of the history of the case:

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge William Young granted release to about 50 ICE detainees held at the Dartmouth facility and denied bail to 19 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Young also ordered that no new detainees be transferred to the ICE center, which is part of the jail complex in Dartmouth.

The order came almost a week after an uprising by detainees at the facility.

Prisoner and immigration activists have criticized Hodgson’s agreement with the federal government to keep ICE detainees at his facility.

Five individuals who were denied release due to serious criminal histories appealed to the First Circuit through the Harvard Law School Immigration Clinic.

“Each of the petitioners here, as the district court knew, had committed serious, violent crimes, many of which were felonies,” Judge Sandra L. Lynch wrote in the decision.

“Based on their criminal histories, it was reasonable to deny bail to these petitioners because they each posed dangers to the community and/or were flight risks,” Lynch said.

I don’t claim to be a legal scholar, but it seems to me that if they were American citizens who committed violent crimes they probably would not be let out on bail. Why are we giving rights to people who are not citizens that American citizens do not have?