An Arizona sheriff railed at a "broken system" that green-lighted the release of three violent criminal immigrants in the state – issuing a dire warning that "this is going to end very badly for people."
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said news of the release came Tuesday via the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's debut of a new notification system, noting that the three criminals included a Russian national who set a police informant on fire, an Iraqi who killed his 2-year-old daughter and an illegal immigrant from Sudan who has committed multiple assaults in two states,
Fox News reports.
Musa Salah Abdelaziz Abdalla of Sudan, Dennis Valerievitch Tsoukanov of Russia, and Nasser Hanna Hermez of Iraq were all freed in Arizona within the last month,
an ABC affiliate reports.
"You don’t have to be a sheriff to realize that this is going to end very badly for people," Babeu said, Fox News reports.
"You don’t release murderers into the state of Arizona and somehow think that they are just going to go about their business and try to find a job."
Babeu declared, "The system is broken."
"Our laws don’t apply, it appears, to these individuals when it comes to immigration and our process," he complained, Fox News reports. "What the sheriffs have said unanimously in the state of Arizona, what I am calling for the president, the United States Congress, to do, is to fix this immediately."
In a statement provided to Fox News, ICE said its hands were tied.
"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under current law can no longer legally hold the three individuals," the agency said, Fox News reports. "To further promote public safety and transparency, ICE notified local law enforcement agencies of the release of the individuals.
"To be clear, the backgrounds of the individuals in question would generally make them enforcement priorities for ICE," the agency statement added. "However, ICE has no legal basis for continuing to hold these individuals. One individual (Hermez) is a lawful permanent resident whose current conviction record does not make him legally removable."
But Babeu, while lauding the notification system, said "by simply notifying sheriffs of the release of dangerous criminals doesn’t address the core problem that these dangerous criminals remain in America."