{"id":7732,"date":"2017-03-22T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7732"},"modified":"2017-03-21T20:39:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T00:39:26","slug":"hogan-exploits-rape-for-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7732","title":{"rendered":"Hogan Exploits Rape for Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Governor Larry Hogan is now exploiting the rape of a Rockville high school student to get a political edge over General Assembly Democrats.\u00a0 It\u2019s a clearly deplorable tactic.\u00a0 But will it work?<\/p>\n

Two big stories are colliding at the moment to further inflame the volatile issue of how to deal with illegal immigration.\u00a0 First, the House of Delegates has passed a version of the Maryland Law Enforcement and Trust Act<\/a>, a bill to limit state and local cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so that immigrant communities will not hide from police for fear of arbitrary deportation.\u00a0 Second, two students at Rockville High School have been arrested for raping a 14-year-old at the school<\/a> and were subsequently alleged by ICE to be present in the country illegally.<\/p>\n

Governor Hogan reacted with the Facebook post below, saying:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The post garnered 700 shares and 500 comments in its first five hours, accomplishing its purpose of throwing gasoline on the fire of the immigration debate.<\/p>\n

The implication of the Governor\u2019s post is that Montgomery County does not currently cooperate with federal authorities.\u00a0 But in fact, it does.\u00a0 The Washington Post\u2019s Bill Turque summarized the county\u2019s immigration policy<\/a> a month ago:<\/p>\n

Montgomery police operate under a 2009 directive that bars officers from conducting \u201cindiscriminate questioning\u201d of suspects, witnesses or prisoners about immigration status. Once in custody, all prisoners are fingerprinted, and arrest information goes into state databases, where it is available to ICE. If the agency identifies an undocumented prisoner, it can send the county a \u201cdetainer\u201d notice, asking that the person remain in custody for at least 48 hours beyond the scheduled release date.<\/p>\n

The county complied with detainers until 2014, when the Maryland attorney general\u2019s office issued an opinion advising localities that they could be liable for damages by holding prisoners past their release date.<\/p>\n

Since then, Montgomery officials said, the county honors detainers only if they are supported by a federal court order or warrant. It will also provide ICE publicly available release dates of undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies and whom the agency is seeking to deport.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The county has released hundreds of prisoners to ICE since 2012<\/a>, though the pace of releases has dropped since the county stopped honoring 48-hour detainers.\u00a0 The amended version of the House-passed Trust Act resembles county policy.\u00a0 On the Rockville High School rape suspects, County Executive Ike Leggett said<\/a>, \u201cThe county \u2014 consistent with our longstanding policy \u2014 will cooperate fully with ICE to see that the two are deported to their countries of origin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why would Hogan insinuate that Montgomery County does not cooperate with federal law enforcement to protect its citizens?\u00a0 Hogan knows that there is little support in the community for protecting violent criminals from deportation.\u00a0 A new CNN poll<\/a> finds that 60% of Americans believe the government should be \u201cdeveloping a plan to allow those in the U.S. illegally who have jobs to become legal residents,\u201d but it also finds that 78% of Americans believe that \u201cthe government should attempt to deport all people currently living in the country illegally who have been convicted of other crimes while living in the U.S.\u201d\u00a0 Big majorities of every demographic group measured support the latter statement, including 64% of Democrats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Depicting Maryland\u2019s largest local jurisdiction as soft on crime is bad enough.\u00a0 Exploiting a rape for political gain is even worse.\u00a0 Such tactics expose just how hard the Governor can throw his elbows in partisan combat.\u00a0 Forget about engaging with General Assembly leaders to develop good public policy; the Governor has never been interested in that.\u00a0 But the cold political truth is this:<\/p>\n

If Hogan can get away with characterizing Democrats as protectors of rapists and other criminals, he wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Governor Larry Hogan is now exploiting the rape of a Rockville high school student to get a political edge over General Assembly Democrats.\u00a0 It\u2019s a clearly deplorable tactic.\u00a0 But will it work? Two big stories are colliding at the moment to further inflame the volatile issue of how to deal with illegal … Continue reading Hogan Exploits Rape for Politics<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,83,1197],"tags":[1545,1917,968],"class_list":["post-7732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-immigration","category-larry-hogan","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-immigration","tag-larry-hogan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-20I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7732"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7739,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions\/7739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}