The rest of the country jokes that all the fruits and nuts go to California, but here in California we joke that the real looney tunes make their way up to San Francisco. Their once-beautiful city has become, literally, a toilet after decades of liberal governance, and the sanctuary city’s police department refuses to send illegal immigrants who are also convicted felons to ICE.

And now the Los Angeles Police Department has instituted a similar policy.

For nearly 40 years the LAPD has operated under Special Notice 40, which prohibited officers from stopping people for the sole purpose of ascertaining their immigration status and from arresting them for entering the country illegally.

Chief Beck has taken that policy up more than a few notches. On December 21, 2016, LAPD’s Chief of Detectives sent a memo to “All Commanding Officers” stating that department personnel:

“…[S]hall not detain an inmate already in local custody for state or local violations, for the sole purpose of transferring custody of the inmate to ICE, unless at least one of the following conditions is present:

• A judicial determination of Probable Cause for the detainer, or
• An arrest warrant from a Judicial Officer.

Custody Services Division will not honor IDNA’s.

For the uninitiated, an IDNA is an Immigration Detainer Notice of Action. So, in a situation where ICE has gone through the bureaucracy to request a detainer, the LAPD brass is flipping them off and saying, “Come back with a judge’s signature on it.” And even then, the policy states that no IDNA’s will be honored without the consent of the Commanding Officer of the Custody Services Division.

But wait, it gets better! LAPD officers are now prohibited from arresting people for violation of Title 8 United States Code, Section 1326(a) or any other immigration crime without a warrant. According to the memo:

United States Code, Title 8, Section 1326 ( a), specifically deals with illegal reentry of a defendant, who was previously lawfully deported or removed from the United States, who voluntarily reentered the United States, and the individual’s deportations occurred after the defendant was convicted for an aggravated felony.

So, a person who was here illegally, who was then convicted of an aggravated felony and subsequently deported, who then re-entered the United States (illegally!) is not allowed to be arrested for that illegal reentry without a warrant?

Say what?

The LAPD now has to go through more hoops to arrest an illegal who is a convicted felon than they have to go through to arrest you or me. That is unbelievable. And though no officers would comment on the record, rumors abound that the policy is extremely unpopular among rank-and-file cops.

Los Angelenos, best of luck. And don’t think you can use this situation as a reason to get a concealed carry permit either – Chief Beck doesn’t hand those out as easily as he does “get out of deportation free” cards.