I’m not certain most Americans are familiar with what sanctuary cities entail. There isn’t a set definition of what a sanctuary city even is, mind you, but one characteristic those cities generally share in common is that they don’t share citizenship information with federal law enforcement officials, including if an individual is arrested or jailed.
If the federal government knows a jailed individual is in the country illegally or is a non-citizen, it can sometimes issue a detainer, which requests that the jurisdiction hold the prisoner until it can take him or her into custody. Sanctuary cities generally ignore these and will release the individual back into the community.
Chicago’s sanctuary city policy includes all of that, which is part of why a 34-year-old Mexican national was able to allegedly molest a 3-year-old at a McDonald’s in the Windy City.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy says Christopher Puente was able to lure the girl into a bathroom stall at the fast food restaurant on Feb. 17 by motioning to her while her father was helping her brother go to the bathroom in another stall.
The father heard the girl crying and, unable to pull the locked door of the stall open, pulled her out from under the door. He brought both children out to their mother and went back to the bathroom to confront Puente, who was still locked in the stall. After going back to check on his children, he went back again to find that Puente had escaped.
Police would arrest him the next day for trespassing in a parking garage and would recognize him from a still in the surveillance video from the McDonald’s.
Puente, Murphy said, had confessed to the crime.
“[Puente] said he was f—ed up and thinking dirty. … He said he was paranoid and looking around as he left the bathroom because he knew what he did was wrong,” Murphy said.
When the judge announced that Puente was being held without bail for predatory criminal sexual assault, the hearing-impaired Puente signed, “You don’t understand. This is my first time,” before his public defender stopped him. In a separate case, he also faces misdemeanor battery charges for inappropriately touching and then shoving a woman.
And yet, Chicago police refused to honor a detainer on him in June of 2019 when he was arrested on theft charges.
It’s not as if he didn’t have a lengthy criminal history, either.
According to The Daily Caller, he has convictions for forced entry burglary (2011, 2017) and forgery (2012). Those are felonies. He was deported in 2014 but tried to re-enter just five days later. He claimed American citizenship and presented authorities with a birth certificate. That ended with charges of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
When he was ordered to appear before an immigration judge, lo and behold, he didn’t show up. In 2017, a judge ordered his removal from the United States in absentia.
All of this information was available to Chicago officials. None of it could move them to deport Puente.
“How many more victims must there be before lawmakers realize that sanctuary policies do not protect the innocent?” Robert Guadian, director of the ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Chicago field office, said in a statement.
“Puente should have been in ICE custody last year and removed to his home country. Instead, irresponsible lawmaking allowed him to walk free and prey on our most vulnerable.”
Christopher Puente Held Without Bail For Raping 3-Year-Old Girl In McDonald's Restroom chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/02/20/chr…
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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said ICE was playing politics … and responded by playing politics.
“If ICE is complaining, then they should do their job better, and they shouldn’t do things that are traumatizing young children. That’s not acceptable, and I was very clear and blunt about that. How is that right?” Lightfoot said, according to WBBM-TV.
Lightfoot was responding to the arrest of 34-year-old Julio Torres in front of his children earlier in February.
She also said that sanctuary policies were necessary for police to maintain good relations with the communities they serve.
“They’re critical because we have said very clearly we’re a welcoming city, we’re a sanctuary city. The Chicago Police Department will not cooperate with ICE on any immigration-related business, and that’s affected their ability to conduct immigration raids across the city, but that’s exactly our intention,” Lightfoot said.
“We have to make sure that our police department is seen as a legitimate force in all communities, and we cannot do that if we’re participating in raids with a weaponized and politicized ICE. We’re not doing that in Chicago.”
The police department needs to be seen as a legitimate force, which is why it didn’t honor a detainer on a career criminal who was in this country illegally and who had been ordered deported in absentia to federal authorities. That individual then proceeded to allegedly molest a 3-year-old. How does this increase police legitimacy when they’re not protecting children to make a political point?
Puente is now behind bars and will, when he finishes his sentence, almost certainly be deported to his home country. This should have been done years ago, however. If it had been, there’s a very good chance this crime would have never happened.
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