Budd leads Senate GOP effort to make assaulting police a deportable offense
Fox News
FIRST ON FOX: North Carolina Republican Sen. Ted Budd is leading a Senate bill to make assaulting law enforcement officers a deportable offense.
Budd is introducing the Protect Our Law enforcement with Immigration Control and Enforcement (POLICE) Act of 2023 on Thursday, telling Fox News Digital that supporting “our police includes removing dangerous people who do them harm.”
“If an illegal immigrant commits the crime of assaulting an officer, they should be subject to immediate deportation,” Budd said. “Our lawmakers must always back the men and women who protect and serve our communities.”
AMID TITLE 42’S EXPIRATION, THIS BROKE BLUE STATE IS CONSIDERING UNEMPLOYMENT FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
The North Carolina Troopers Association told Fox News Digital the “POLICE Act sends a clear message to criminals: If you assault a trooper, you don’t get to stay in our country.”
“We support this bill and thank Senator Budd for leading it,” they continued.
Budd’s bill would make it so that any “alien who has been convicted of, who admits having committed, or who admits committing acts constituting the essential elements of, and offense involving the assault of a law enforcement officer is deportable.”
The circumstances leading to an illegal immigrant’s deportation eligibility under the bill would be if the officer was assaulted while “engaged in the performance of his or her official duties,” if the assault occurred “because of the performance of his or her official duties,” or if the assault happened “because of his or her station as a law enforcement officer.”
Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., is leading the House version of the POLICE Act, which passed the lower chamber on Wednesday night.
The bill comes amid National Police Week, an annual observance honoring law enforcement officers in the United States that was started under former President Kennedy.
Violent crimes are on the rise in major cities across the country this year following 2020’s already skyrocketing national murder spike that bled into the following year.
Fox News Digital examined crime data from Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and found violent crimes have increased anywhere from nearly 5% to up to 40% compared to the same time frame in 2021. Violent crimes are typically defined as reports of rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault and murder.
Violent crimes have reached unprecedented numbers in the last two years, with murders increasing by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to FBI data. By 2021, homicides continued to rise in major American cities across the country, with the Council on Criminal Justice releasing data in January showing a 5% increase in homicides compared to 2020’s bloody year.
New York City has so far seen the largest increase in violent crimes out of the cities reviewed by Fox News, with a 40.6% increase compared to 2021. The city has recorded 43,244 violent crime incidents since May 15, compared to 2021’s 30,754 recorded during the same timeframe.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed reporting.