Louisiana AG Murrill Tells New Orleans High Cop: You Can’t Refuse to Assist ICE, CBP

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has warned the New Orleans chief of police that hindering the enforcement of federal immigration law is a crime and that her department must cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

AG Murrill delivered the warning in a letter to Anne Kirkpatrick, who said in late November that Crescent City cops won’t help ICE because entering the country illegally is a “civil” offense.

Murrill cited state and federal law, telling the 66-year-old headmistress of police that she and her cops are required not just by the law, but by their oaths, to enforce federal law.

Kirkpatrick Erroneous Claim

Kirkpatrick jumped into deep water when she falsely but confidently claimed that her police force was exempt from helping ICE.

“We have taken back our own ownership of our agency,” she quacked:

To be in the country undocumented is a civil issue. We will not enforce civil law and so our support is to make sure they’re not going to get hurt and our community is not in danger.

Kirkpatrick has a law degree from Seattle University Law School, but must have been absent the day they taught law. Two federal laws, 8 US Code 1325 and 8 US Code 1326 criminalize illegal entry and illegal entry after deportation.

Kirkpatrick is not alone in her misreading of federal law and misleading the public. 

Indian immigrant congresswoman Pramilla Jayapal, far-left Democrat of Washington state, offered the same false claim yesterday in a X post. Kirkpatrick was a police chief in three Evergreen State police departments, so maybe the two put their noggins together to invent a new reading of federal law.

At the time, Murrill explained on X that she had straightened Kirkpatrick out.

“I’ve spoken to Chief Kirkpatrick about this,” she wrote:

It is a state crime to obstruct ICE and federal immigration enforcement. Law enforcement should enforce the law.

Today’s Letter, City Manual

Murrill wrote to Kirkpatrick today to reinforce the point. The letter landed two days after ICE launched Operation Catahoula Crunch, which has already rounded up the usual polyglot collection of illegal-alien thugs and goons.

The New Orleans police department’s “policies appear to conflict with current state law and also may be interpreted as ‘sanctuary’ policies specifically designed and implemented to frustrate, hinder, and prevent cooperation and assistance to ICE as it fulfills its critical immigration enforcement mission in New Orleans,” Murrill began.

The department’s manual says that cops can’t cooperate with federal agents “except in three, narrow circumstances,” Murrill continued:

NOPD officers “shall not engage in, assist, or support immigration enforcement except … [i]n response to an articulated, direct threat to life or public safety; or [w]hen such services are required to safely execute a criminal warrant or court order issued by a federal or state judge; [or] [s]ending to ICE, or receiving from ICE, information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of an individual as provided in [8 U.S.C. §1373(a)].”

Such are the pro-illegal alien restrictions that cops can’t even help ICE and CPB with traffic control during an immigration raid. The manual requires that cops who receive a request from ICE for help to report it to a supervisor. That individual ”shall decline the request and document the declination,” Murrill wrote, again citing the manual.

The problem, Murrill continued, is that neither ICE nor the Border Patrol need a judicial arrest warrant to apprehend an illegal. “Immigration officers may make criminal and administrative arrests without a warrant in public places, just as any other law enforcement officer may arrest based upon an offense committed in his presence,” Murrill told Kirkpatrick.

Federal Law

That’s because federal law permits an arrest and removal on administrative grounds. Contrary to Kirkpatrick and Jayapal, federal law authorizes “criminal prosecutions for certain immigration violations, such as alien smuggling, illegal entry, and illegal reentry after removal. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1324, 1325, and 1326,” Murrill explained:

Accordingly, ICE and CBP may arrest an alien for a criminal or civil violation of immigration laws when probable cause exists, just as NOPD officers make arrests every day. Thus, NOPD’s policy exceeds what is legally required of ICE as well as generally required of its own officers by demanding ICE or CBP produce a judicial warrant for an immigration violator. By exceeding the generally-applicable legal limits on ICE operations, NOPD policy hinders and/or obstructs ICE in apparent violation of state law as well as federal law.

Noting the attacks on ICE and CBP agents, Murrill told Kirkpatrick that state law prohibits municipalities from passing sanctuary statutes. “The clear command of this legislation is: ‘A state entity, law enforcement agency, or local governmental entity may not adopt or have in effect a sanctuary policy,’” Murrill wrote.

As well, municipalities cannot prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with ICE; i.e., “from sending to, receiving from, or exchanging with a federal immigration agency information regarding an alien’s immigration status, or prohibit it from using the information to comply with an immigration detainer or confirming the identity of a detainee.”

State law also gives the attorney general the power to sue municipalities that violate that law. It is a “felony offense (malfeasance in office) for any public officer or employee to refuse a lawful request for cooperation submitted by ICE or CBP, ‘with the intent to hinder, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere, ignore, or thwart federal immigration enforcement efforts.,’” Murrill wrote.

Murrill Explains Kirkpatrick’s Job

Murrill also reminded Kirkpatrick that she is in charge of the department, and requiring cops to refuse to help ICE except in narrow circumstances could invite a felony charge for malfeasance. 

Citing the federal statute that forbids harboring illegals, Murrill wrote that yammering that “undocumented is a civil issue,” as Kirkpatrick did, won’t protect anyone:

Further, a person commits a federal felony if they, “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place.”  … There is no absolution in suggesting that immigration enforcement laws are a “civil issue,” and, on that basis, NOPD cannot assist or support ICE and CBP in their enforcement efforts. 

All of Louisiana law enforcement “has a duty to support all duly enacted federal and state law,.” Murrill explained. And again citing state law, Murrill wrote that New Orleans cops “must ‘use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.’”

Concluded Murrill:

I recommend that you immediately direct NOPD officers and staff to fully cooperate with ICE and СВР.