(WASHINGTON TIMES) As many as 100 criminals a day are being released back onto the street in the Los Angeles area alone under California’s sanctuary city law, ICE’s top deportation official told Congress on Tuesday as he pleaded for lawmakers to do something.

Timothy S. Robbins, acting associate executive director of detention and removal operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said his agency used to get 75 to 100 illegal immigrants turned over each day from jails in the Los Angeles region. Now it gets fewer than five a day.

The irony, he said, is that sanctuary communities say they want ICE to focus on deporting criminals — but by refusing to cooperate at their jails they’re actually pushing the agency’s 6,800 deportation officers out into communities, meaning they are more likely to pick up rank-and-file illegal immigrants while arresting fewer criminals.

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