Laura Ingraham: ‘California Is Almost Acting Like It’s a Separate Country’

Earlier this week on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham slammed California and its leaders for its sanctuary city policies and its open defiance of the federal government seeking to uphold existing immigration law.

Transcript as follows:

INGRAHAM: The radical takeover of California, that’s the focus of tonight’s ANGLE.

I still remember the first time I traveled to Southern California, it was the summer of 1984 and Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics. Reagan was president and Republican George (inaudible) was the state’s governor. Now, he was a moderate conservative, a law and order kind of guy.

The whole place, to me at least, felt like a Beach Boy song, the weather, the people, the lifestyle was all, you know, beautiful stuff. But today, the sunshine not with understanding, California is a very different place. It’s now a place where state officials actively thwart federal authorities trying to stop violent criminal offenders.

Oakland’s mayor, Libby Schaaf, went so far as to issue a warning to immigrant communities that an ICE raid was forthcoming. Well, the president sounded off on that today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the mayor of Oakland did the other day was a disgrace where they had close to 1,000 people ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets. Many of them, they say 85 percent of them were criminals and had criminal records, and the mayor of Oakland went out and she went out and warned them all, scatter.

So instead of taking in a thousand, they took in a fraction of that. She said get out of here. She is telling that to criminals and it’s certainly something that we are looking at with respect to her individually. What she did is incredible and very dangerous from the standpoint of ICE and Border Patrol, very dangerous. She really made law enforcement much more dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Now, for her part, Mayor Schaaf is deflecting that criticism and she is going straight to the r-word.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR LIBBY SCHAAF, OAKLAND: The attorney general is trying to distract the American people from a failed immigration system by painting a racist, broad brush of our immigrant community as dangerous criminals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Now who is mentioning skin color or ethnicity or where people are from. That’s just pathetic. California, the way you see this playing out, is almost acting like it’s a separate country all together, not a separate state. Well, I think Attorney General Jeff Sessions was 100 percent correct yesterday when he labeled state officials radical extremists for perpetuating the lawlessness.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JFFF SESSIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Federal law determines immigration policy. State of California is not entitled to block that activity. Somebody needs to stand up and say no, you’ve gone too far. You cannot do this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: But California AG Javier Becerra shot back. He argued that the state sanctuary laws are constitutional adding our folks are very busy doing public safety around the state. We don’t have to do the immigration work for immigration officials. Excuse me. Public safety?

Well, that’s what we are supposed to believe when your own Oakland mayor warned the illegal aliens ahead of time when she got wind of the ice raid that was about to happen? Today, the White House released a partial list of the crimes committed set free despite the lawful request of immigration authorities. Check it out.

There is a Guatemalan citizen who was arrested last august for injuring his spouse. While the Sonoma County jail provided ice with a whopping 24 minutes in the before it released the alien. A few weeks later, the Santa Rosa Police Department in California arrested that same individual as a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend.

Another Guatemalan, an alleged gang member was arrested by the San Francisco police more than 10 times between 2013 and 2017 for charges including rape, domestic battery, second degree robbery, assault, vehicle theft, and on each occasion, what happened was ice requested notification of his release so then ice could take him into custody.

Each time ICE’s request was declined by California. And then a citizen of Mexico was arrested by Santa Clara County for drug possession on January 11th, 2017. He was later convicted of child cruelty, felony possession purchase of controlled substances and, of course, possession of marijuana. He was released from local custody.

The list goes on and on. And we could literally do an entire show just on the myriad ways that California sanctuary policies have endangered the lives of innocent, law abiding citizens. And, of course, law enforcement and, of course, legal immigrants.

California AG Becerra and Governor Moon Beam Brown are living in alternative universe. They deny that they even have sanctuary laws in place. Yet, here’s what their new statutes stipulate. In violation of federal statutes, local officials cannot tell the feds when illegals in custody are about to be released.

And they are banned under this law from transferring criminal immigrants to federal officials. Now, we are talking about undocumented criminals here. And the state of California is also so concerned about the welfare of the illegal immigrants, that they imposed a state-run inspection of immigrants detained by the federal government.

So, basically, they are trying to regulate federal immigration detention and, perhaps most outrageously, one California law now requires private business owners to — they can’t voluntarily cooperate with ICE agents. Now, in fact, they have to notify illegal employees before any workplace inspections take place or those private business owners face heavy fines.

Now, you cannot get more radical and rapidly open borders than that. Though California officials are triggered over the sessions’ lawsuit, it may be, may be the beginning of restoring some sanity to this state.

Republicans, let’s face it, largely have been shut out of California politics now for years u and we are a very long way from the days when Pete Wilson was governor back in the 1990s. Permissive liberal social welfare policies and the embrace of illegal immigrants have plunged the state into a spiral of homelessness.

It’s now at a crisis point declared by San Francisco and Los Angeles and even Orange County. We reported on this before is grappling with homeless encampments and the crime and health issues that come along with them. This is not what the people of California want. How do I know that?

Well, a UC Berkeley poll just found that 74 percent of Californians wanted to end sanctuary cities including 55 percent of Hispanics, and 73 percent of Democrats. Now, if that’s not a cry for sanity or a cry for help, I do not know what is.

Sessions and the Trump administration are throwing the golden state a lifeline with these sanctuary lawsuits because if they’re successful, perhaps the good vibrations, political and otherwise, can roll through California once again. And that’s THE ANGLE.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor