Listen as Larry spoke with Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner regarding the delay of the Purple Line.
O’Connor also asked Berliner for his thoughts regarding Montgomery County police ignoring the ICE detainer for Mario Alvarado:
O’Connor: We had the County Executive Ike Leggett a couple of weeks ago to speak to this ridiculous story about Mario Alvarado, the 19-year-old El Salvador citizen who was arrested for having the stolen AR-15 rifle on school property. I’m sure you know the story. He was released even though there was an open ICE detainer. As you know, Executive Leggett said at the time to us that this was a bad call, we shouldn’t have done that, we need to rethink our policy and make sure law enforcement knows exactly which people to hold. Whether it’s an ICE detainer or not and which people to release’. Have we fined that policy enough yet? Do we know exactly what crimes are worthy of holding a suspect in a crime for that ICE retainer and which suspects law enforcement will in fact release?
Berliner: I asked the County Executive that exact same question the day of this incident and have yet to see anything formal sent forward in respect to modifications. We have always said that we do in fact cooperate with ICE. We cooperate with ICE when there is probable cause. We cooperate with ICE when there is a warrant. And we have been advised, in the absence of either of those two things, our Attorney General has told us that it is improper to detain somebody. It’s unconstitutional to detain somebody in the absence of either of those two things. I think the issue was probable cause, as to whether or not we had enough information that this was really a bad guy to say, ‘oh no we can’t let this guy out’. Our police department has said to us repeatedly, our number one priority is indeed public safety. So, I was grateful that the County Executive and our corrections people all said, yes we messed up on this.
[Note: This transcript was corrected as of May 26, 2017 at 10:20am]
CALL: 202-432-WMAL (9625) | 888-630-WMAL (9625)
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