Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf is reportedly “touched” that a San Francisco spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), James Schwab, quit this week after accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of misleading the public about the number of criminal illegal immigrants who may have avoided capture due to Schaaf’s alert.
Thomas Homan, ICE’ s acting director, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last week that at least 800 criminal illegal immigrants were not detained possibly due to Schaaf’s alert. But Schwab told the San Francisco Chronicle that he felt this claim was misleading “because we were not ever going to be able to capture 100 percent of the target list.”
“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” Schwab told the Chronicle. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”
Schaaf, who said she was not concerned that hundreds of criminal illegal immigrants could be on Oakland’s streets because of her alert, said she honored Schwab for resigning.
“I can’t tell you how touched I was that the ICE spokesman resigned over this incident, over the fact that he was being told to misrepresent the truth as a government servant, as a public servant,” Schaaf told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. “I really honor him for that decision, because we really have to continue to… reclaim the trust that our residents, I believe, are losing in the institution of both government and democracy.”
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