Seattle officials have opened up city police jobs to illegal aliens in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
With the Seattle Police Department (SPD) at its lowest staffing level in decades, officials in city hall are looking to take advantage of a recently passed state law that allows jurisdictions to hire non-citizens as police officers.
The Democrat-dominated state legislature recently passed Senate Bill 6157, a law that allows jurisdictions to give DACA recipients police powers. One reason the bill was needed is because so many liberal cities have wiped out their police departments with Black Lives Matter (BLM) policies, defund the police schemes, and other policies that generally undermine their departments, making it difficult to find recruits.
Seattle, for instance, has lost more than 700 officers over the past five years, and, with only 913 officers, it now stands at a 30-year low in its number of officers.
“SPD continues to lose more officers than it is able to hire, and 2023 was no exception. Ninety-seven sworn officers left the force, and, out of 1,948 applicants, only 61, or 3%, were hired,” said Seattle Council President Sara Nelson.
To solve this self-imposed crisis, city hall is looking to take advantage of SB 6157 and is considering hiring DACA recipients, but the proposal has some drawbacks.
One issue is the fact that illegal aliens have no right to own or carry firearms in the United States. President Joe Biden’s regime has softened that law to a degree by ruling that illegals hired as police officers may carry guns on duty but must turn their weapons in to the department when off duty and cannot take guns home or wear them while off duty.
However, Biden’s move is no long-term solution. That policy change that Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) floated could easily be rescinded by any future president. So, the measure is hardly a permanent policy for DACA recipients hired as police officers. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the ATF’s policy is even constitutional.
The move also seems quixotic in expecting DACA recipients who live in the U.S. illegally to be the same ones to enforce the law.
Seattle’s hiring plan seems to be a prime example of social engineering, too. Already, the city has come under scrutiny for insisting that the SPD needs to be more “diverse” and have fewer whites and military veterans.
Ben Dalgetty, a strategist from Democrat Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, sent out a memo in 2023 titled “SPD Marketing More and Less,” in which the “less” was defined as fewer white people and the “more” was defined as more minority representation, KTTH radio’s Jason Rantz reported. After receiving backlash, city hall raced to “adjust” the policy debate, but the harm had already been done.
Seattle is not the first city to consider this plan. Washington State is not the only state that allows cities to hire non-citizens for law enforcement jobs. According to NewsNation, Illinois, Colorado, and California have each passed their own version of the hiring scheme, and Wisconsin and New Jersey are considering bills along those lines.
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