Any time an immigrant here illegally is accused of a horrific crime, the Trump administration turns around and blames New Jersey.

It just happened again, after the rape and strangling of a woman in Jersey City -- even though the feds couldn’t point to a single thing our state did wrong in that case. The suspect was in the country illegally after having been deported twice. How that is New Jersey’s fault is anyone’s guess.

It all comes back to the fallacy that New Jersey is a “sanctuary” for criminals, as if they are somehow immune from the rule of law. That’s 100 percent nonsense. And Phil Murphy’s Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who crafted our policy on cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is fed up.

He’s even been getting death threats over this. After a steady barrage of public attacks from ICE, he gave us a remarkably convincing rebuttal this week at a Star-Ledger editorial board meeting.

First, Grewal spelled it out explicitly: New Jersey is no “sanctuary” for criminals. It never will be. “You break the law, you go to jail, regardless of your immigration status.”

But to jail the bad guys, we have to catch them first. And the police can’t do that if victims and witnesses who might be here illegally are afraid to report crimes, he said.

“They feel that if they go to a police station, they might end up in a deportation center. Because of that, they refuse to go testify at trial. Because of that, their domestic abuser might go free. And because of that, a gang member might not get prosecuted,” he said. “If we’re truly serious about prosecuting MS-13, we want their victims to come forward.”

By creating a climate of fear in which they can’t, ICE is providing its own sanctuary to MS-13. The gang doesn’t prey on just anybody. Its victims are mostly fellow immigrants, many of them living in the shadows. Grewal asks, “Don’t we want them to come forward?”

That is why his “Immigrant Trust” directive says local cops should not ask about immigration status. This is the job of ICE. What gets dubbed a “sanctuary” policy is, in fact, a strategy endorsed by our urban police chiefs, because it helps them solve crimes.

Once the bad guys are in custody, New Jersey stands ready to help ICE deport them, Grewal says -- as long as ICE does its job and gets a court order. Courts have ruled it unconstitutional for jails to hold inmates after they have completed their criminal sentences, so this is necessary to authorize the added time in detention, if ICE can’t get there right away.

“The problem is that ‘soon’ has often turned into 48 hours, it’s often turned into 72 hours, it’s often turned into longer periods of time,” Grewal says. “We’re not going to honor detainers for weeks. In the most serious cases, we’ll honor detainers a number of hours, till the end of the day. And if ICE doesn’t pick them up, it’s on ICE.”

Right. As when ICE never responded to a notification from Middlesex County about a Mexican national held on domestic violence charges. After sitting in jail for 51 more days, Middlesex had to finally release him, since ICE had failed to get the needed judicial order. He later killed three people, and ICE pointed the finger at New Jersey to cover its own screw-up.

Grewal wonders why ICE, which has the resources to do massive sweeps and arrest grandpas, can’t be bothered to get a court order to pick up a criminal. And why, instead of calling out ICE, the blowhards are ranting at him: “I’m somehow giving a pass to criminals, and I should be shot and deported.”

Besides being “disingenuous,” he says, ICE is “whipping up this fervor” that feeds into a “completely false narrative” – one that is “vilifying immigrants, when immigrants don’t commit crimes at higher rates than native-born populations.” The statistics back him up on this.

And here’s the bottom line: “We have done nothing but made plain what our role is, that folks can trust us to report crimes, and come forward and know that their cases will be prosecuted, and we’re not here to harass them,” Grewal said. “And that’s good for public safety.”

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.