Before taking office, the Biden administration made it clear that they planned to undo many of the Trump administration’s policies. However, most recently Biden did away with ‘Operation Talon’, a Trump-era program designed to seek out and remove sex offenders living within the U.S. illegally.
The move led 18 state attorney generals to join together and urge Biden to rethink the cancellation, including South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson.
“We’re working hard to fight human trafficking and sex crimes in South Carolina and allowing convicted sex offenders who are here illegally to remain in our country makes absolutely no sense.” Wilson told ABC News, “These trafficking and sex crimes are repugnant to human decency generally and to children specifically.
The coalition of state attorney generals sent a letter directed to President Biden, the acting Director of ICE Tae Johnson, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
The letter stated, “The United States’ population of illegal immigrants includes disturbingly large numbers of criminals with prior convictions for sexual crimes. According to data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, during the period from October 2014 to May 2018 ICE arrested 19,572 illegal aliens with criminal convictions for whom the most serious prior conviction was a conviction for a sex-related offense.”
The attorney generals asked in the letter, “If the United States will not remove even convicted sex offenders, whom will it remove?”