Soros-Backed DA’s Office Gave Free Consultations to Illegal Aliens Charged With Violent Crimes
Jason Hopkins /
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office provided free consultations and legal assistance to illegal aliens charged with violent felonies in 2023, documents reveal.
The taxpayer-funded consultations were provided to migrants charged with various heinous crimes—including rape, robbery, strangulation, aggravated assault, and homicide by vehicle—in an ostensible effort to help them avoid convictions that would lead to their deportation, documents obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute reveal.
Krasner created the position of immigration counsel in 2018 to provide consultations and work on cases involving illegal aliens.
“He is directly contradicting the purpose of a district attorney—to prosecute crimes—and using his office to help immigration violators evade the law,” Dale Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said of Krasner. “The last thing the city needs is to keep criminal aliens there who may have earned deportation.”
The Immigration Reform Law Institute outlined issues with the case list and questioned the objectives of the immigration counsel position in an investigative report published Thursday.
Krasner first won election as Philadelphia’s district attorney in 2017, after left-wing billionaire George Soros dropped well over $1 million to fund a super PAC to support him in the Democratic primary. Like all Soros-backed prosecutors, Krasner ran on a left-wing approach to criminal justice, which calls for ending mass incarceration and shielding illegal aliens from deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This position in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office focuses on obtaining “immigration-neutral” outcomes for defendants facing prosecution, according to its website.
In practice, reaching “immigration-neutral” outcomes typically means the immigration counsel works with prosecutors on lowering charges against non-citizens accused of various crimes—defendants who are illegal immigrants are not excluded from possible consultation, according to the office and past reports.
A foreign national charged with rape, for example, would likely face “immigration consequences,” i.e. apprehension and deportation by federal immigration authorities, upon completion of local criminal proceedings.
“I look at every case where the defendant has been identified as an immigrant to see if there’s an immigration-neutral outcome that is just,” Immigration Counsel Caleb Arnold said. “Sometimes that means creating an outcome that doesn’t have any immigration consequences, or minimized immigration consequences.”
At the outset of Arnold’s position, Krasner’s office repeatedly suggested the immigration counsel would not provide assistance to foreign nationals accused of high-level offenses such as homicide and sex crimes.
Krasner said in a 2018 press release that the immigration counsel would focus on cases involving “low-level offenders who pose no threat to public safety” and that same day said the counsel would work on “cases that are not that serious but have very serious immigration consequences.”
However, a case list of defendants who consulted with the immigration counsel reveals that the district attorney’s office is helping potentially dangerous noncitizens avoid deportation.
The institute filed a records request with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, asking for a list of “defendants Immigration Counsel Caleb Arnold has consulted with, or otherwise worked on, over the 2023 calendar year.”
The list that was handed over, redacting names and case numbers, showed the following: 29 DUI cases; 21 aggravated assault, domestic violence, and other cases involving crimes of violence; 26 cases of possession of drugs with intent to distribute; 12 firearm cases; nine cases of rape and indecent assault and sexual assault on a child; nine robbery or burglary cases; and one vehicular homicide case.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained the 2023 case list and confirmed the breakdown of charges.
It was not immediately clear whether the defendants charged with the most serious crimes were able to get their charges pleaded down or faced arrest by federal immigration authorities. Krasner’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In its investigative report, the Immigration Reform Law Institute noted that the case list not only contradicts past claims by Krasner’s office but gives special privileges to foreign nationals not afforded to U.S. citizens.
“However, prosecutors’ offices rarely, if ever, take special steps to minimize these consequences when defendants are U.S. citizens,” the report states. “And we are unaware of any DA’s offices that employ special attorneys solely to insulate citizen criminal defendants from the effects of their criminal behavior.”
“It is utterly shocking that any DA’s office in the United States would pursue these kinds of irresponsible policies,” said Matt O’Brien, director of investigation at the institute. “Essentially, DA Krasner is rewarding foreign nationals for committing crimes in the United States.”
“And he is doing so at the expense of the city he is sworn to protect,” O’Brien said.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation