Frederick County, Maryland, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins slammed the “self-aggrandizing” comments made by Frederick Mayor Michael O’Connor who said that he would fight President-elect Donald Trump‘s immigration plans of mass deportations by providing legal funds to migrants.
“Like many of you, I understand the uncertainty that a Trump presidency brings,” O’Connor said in a press conference on Nov. 21. “We refuse to aid and abet outside agencies attempting to detain, deport, or remove any residents from our community.”
On Wednesday, the Frederick County sheriff weighed in on O’Connor’s comments about fighting Trump’s immigration efforts.
“The mayor is very foolish in making those statements. He’s been an embarrassment to Frederick City,” Jenkins said in a radio interview. “He’s self-aggrandizing himself to be more important than he really is.”
“This is not his concern. It is not his matter. Frankly, it’s put the Frederick police department and [Police Chief Jason] Lando in a bad spot here,” the sheriff added.
The sheriff confirmed that the mayor can’t stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from coming into the county to enforce the law.
“There’s nothing he can do about that,” Jenkins said.
O’Connor added that he plans to ask the city council for legal funds to provide resources to migrants to ensure “they have the legal support they need to stand strong and remain in this community they have chosen to call home.”
Frederick, Maryland, mayor plans to use tax dollars to protect illegals from Trump deportations.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 26, 2024
READ: https://t.co/mXokafIAXL#frederickmd #Maryland #illegals #illegalimmigrants #deportations #tomhoman #DonaldTrump #viral #trending #explorepage #taxdollars pic.twitter.com/1wvYKQaXut
The Maryland county has a 287(g) agreement between ICE and the sheriff’s office that allows local officers to enforce federal immigration laws resulting in deportation and detention. The 287(g) program and the sheriff have been a target and the ire of pro-open borders advocates.
The sheriff said that he has jurisdiction in Frederick County, Maryland to provide logistics, transportation, work spaces, and staging areas that help ICE agents make arrests.
Last week, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stated that he was willing to go to jail to stop possible mass deportation efforts of Trump’s administration.
“I’m not afraid of that and I’m also not seeking that,” he said.
Incoming border czar Tom Homan recently responded to the Denver mayor by saying that he was willing to put him in jail.
“Look, me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing — he’s willing to go to jail, I’m willing to put him in jail because there there’s a statute. It’s Title 8 United States Code 1324 (iii). And what it says is it’s a felony if you knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer,” Homan said.
Sheriff Jenkins noted that it’s possible that the Frederick mayor could be jailed as well for defying immigration laws.
“Now he may not have to cooperate but he certainly can impede,” he said. “That’s where it becomes a situation: does he place himself at risk of getting arrested? Which he could. It wouldn’t be by me. It would be the federal government.”
Jenkins said the mayor’s comments “have done nothing more, at this point, than to invite more criminal aliens and maybe more gang elements to Frederick City with this false notion that he’s going to be able to protect them.”
“He has no right to promise taxpayer to fund their legal defense,” the sheriff said of O’Connor’s vow to ask the city council for legal funds for migrants. “There is no government that is flushed with cash right now. Everybody’s struggling, our law enforcement, everybody is struggling for money.”
Jenkins said he would “love to see” the mayor “sitting in a room” with the families of Laken Riley and Rachel Morin, victims of migrant murderers, and have him “explain to them” why “he feels the way he feels.”
“He’s never been placed in that position — and I hope he never is — of having a family member brutalized, murdered, or raped by an illegal. I hope it never happens to anybody every again,” he said.
The sheriff said that the mayor has “what they call ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.'”
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Jenkins encouraged Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), Trump’s nominee for homeland security secretary, to consider “standing up the task force model, the 287(g) program, as it existed years ago.”
Homan recently called Jenkins “an American patriot.”
Frederick County was formerly a Republican area in western Maryland but has increasingly been growing from purple to blue with the influx of Democrats from fleeing Montgomery County and other metropolitan Washington, D.C., suburbs.