Chief Who Supports Sanctuary Policies Gets Top ICE Job

In a laughable move, the Obama Administration has appointed a police chief who supports illegal alien sanctuary policies to oversee an immigration enforcement program that requires a partnership between federal and local authorities.

The new director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination is Harold Hurtt, an outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level. As police chief in two different cities with huge illegal alien populations—Phoenix and Houston—Hurtt enforced don’t-ask-don’t-tell immigration measures that prevented officers from inquiring about a suspects’ legal status in the U.S.

In his new post, Hurtt will get $180,000 a year to supervise outreach and communication between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies. In essence, he is charged with strengthening the collaboration between local police and federal immigration officials in an effort to combat a crisis that has rocked practically every major U.S. city and many small municipalities.

Homeland Security officials are promoting Hurtt as “a respected member of the law enforcement community” who will be an “invaluable asset to ICE’s outreach and coordination efforts.” The reality is that he opposes immigration enforcement and as police chief protected the most violent of criminals. Hurtt has even testified before Congress that local police should not assist with immigration enforcement.

His pro-immigration policies enabled illegal immigrants with extensive criminal histories to murder two police officers and seriously injure another while he was chief in Phoenix and later in Houston. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Hurtt on behalf of the deceased Houston officer’s wife for implementing the sanctuary policies that led to her husband’s death.

In the 2007 incident, Officer Rodney Johnson was brutally shot by a previously deported illegal immigrant during a traffic stop. The illegal alien, Juan Quintero, had an extensive criminal record and had been deported three years earlier for molesting a child. The Mexican national had also been in trouble for driving while intoxicated, driving with a suspended license and for failing to stop and provide information after an automobile accident. When Johnson arrested him, Quintero shot him four times in the back of the head with a 9 millimeter handgun concealed in the waistband of his pants.