California Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday insisted that California’s “sanctuary state” laws do not benefit criminal illegal aliens.

While speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Brown was asked whether California’s “sanctuary state” laws favor the “rights of criminal illegal aliens over the rights” of law-abiding Californians.

Brown said that notion is “absolutely false” and claimed that there is not a “scintilla of evidence that would support such an outlandish” proposition.

The California governor also said that it is a “lie” to say that Fullerton’s Grace Aguilar would still be alive if the state had more stringent immigration enforcement.

Aguilar, who was just six years of age, was reportedly murdered this year while sitting in her front yard by a twice-deported illegal immigrant who was driving under the influence.

NBC4 reported in February:

Immigration officials say 50-year-old Maximino Delgado Lagunas, who is in the United States illegally, had a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit when he was arrested. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed to NBC4 that Lagunas, a Mexican national, had been deported twice, once in 2001 and again in 2008. Court records show that in 2015 he was arrested for another DUI. Immigration officials say that back then Buena Park police did not detain Lagunas for the required 48 hours for pickup by immigration officials, instead placing him on informal probation and releasing him to the streets.

It took the Aguilars eight years to have their precious Grace, who was described as someone who “loved people, nature and God.”

Brown last year signed SB 54, the state’s main sanctuary law that prohibits local authorities from honoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, and he has vehemently defended it.

After the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against three of California’s “sanctuary state” laws in March, Brown accused the Trump administration of “going to war” against the Golden State.

“This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy,” Brown said then. “It’s not wise, it’s not right, and it will not stand.”

Tuesday at the National Press Club, Brown also said that local officials who have been voting to defy the state’s sanctuary laws were “low-life” politicians trying to “exploit” the immigration issue.