CNN host John Walsh is highlighting that illegal immigrants convicted of sex crimes have not been required to register as sex offenders.
Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett, Walsh explained that while convicted American felons are on the sex offender list, convicted illegal immigrant sex offenders are not.
“How could a country that could put a Mars Rover on Mars to send back pictures of ice crystals at a cost of $44 billion not be able to track convicted felons, especially sex offenders, especially illegal alien sex offenders who have gotten into this country and broken the law, raped our women or hurt our children, molested our children and then are released back into society, just let go,” Walsh said.
Walsh explained how he fought to get the government to track sex offenders with the Adam Walsh Act, createing a national registry named for his murdered son.
“So now you are able to find out by a federal sex offender registry, and there are one in every state, if a convicted American felon sex offender is living next door,” he said, adding “not an illegal immigrant.”
Burnett expressed shock that illegal immigrants are not on the registry.
Walsh called for a federal law for an illegal immigrant sex offender registry. “There has to be a national will to do this,” he said.
As the Boston Globe reported recently, and National Review highlighted again Wednesday:
Hundreds of immigrants convicted of sex crimes who should have been deported but instead were released in the United States because their homelands refused to take them back.
They are convicted rapists, child molesters, and kidnappers — among “the worst of the worst,” as one law enforcement agency put it. Yet the Globe found that immigration officials have released them without making sure they register with local authorities as sex offenders.
And once US Immigration and Customs Enforcement frees them, agency officials often lose track of the criminals, despite outstanding deportation orders against them. The Globe determined that Hernandez Carrera and several other offenders had failed to register as sex offenders, a crime. By law, police are supposed to investigate if such offenders fail to update their address within days of their release. But local officials said they did not learn that ICE had released the offenders until after the Globe inquired about their cases.