Law enforcement officials urge president for illegal immigration reform

WASHINGTON - The Sheriff of Loudoun County Virginia is urging the Trump administration to keep up the pressure on crimes committed by illegal immigrants.  

President Trump has continuously spoken about crime caused by the route of illegal immigration. He spoke about it during his State of the Union address and he mentioned it again during a roundtable discussion inside the White House with law enforcement officials from Virginia and Maryland.

Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman says he urged the president to keep up the pressure on this issue because he says it will not go away on its own.

"I think it's important. I think it's great that the president keeps this on the front burner. We don't want this issue to go away. This is very important. We're seeing a lot of gang-related activity, a lot of death associated with that, a lot of crime associated with that, a lot of murder. If you put it on the back burner, it's not going to get the attention it needs," said Sheriff Chapman.

The meeting comes as Salvador Gomez-Lopez, a 46-year-old illegal immigrant is awaiting a trial in April. He's charged with stabbing a man in Wheaton with a box cutter after the man found him urinating in public and told him to stop.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement tell FOX 5  they've issued a detainer for Gomez Lopez, who is in the U.S. illegally from El Salvador and is an ICE fugitive.

Sheriff Chapman says local police departments are struggling to contain crimes that are caused by illegal immigrants. He says they're not only killing American citizens. but gangs like MS-13 are preying on their own immigrant communities.

In D.C. on Tuesday, there was a gathering of families through the Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crimes, whose loved ones had been killed by illegal immigrants.  Among the parents, Michelle Root, whose daughter Sarah Root was killed by an illegal immigrant drunk driver. 

"She was 21 years old. She was killed by an illegal who was 19, who was drinking and street racing. It's also been two years since he bonded out and fled, never to be caught, never to pay for the crime of killing my daughter," said Michelle Root.

Frederick County, Maryland Sheriff Chuck Jenkins told families, his county's cooperation with ICE in cracking down on illegal immigration has helped lower the crime rate.

"We work with ICE, and we remove criminals from our county and from our streets. We do not allow criminals to be released from our jail back out on to the streets of Frederick County to victimize more Americans," said Sheriff Jenkins.

President Trump took to Twitter Tuesday morning to write about the deaths of Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson and another man, who were both killed in a crash with a suspected drunk driver who was reported to have been in the U.S. Illegally. 

The president calling the deaths, "Just one of many such preventable tragedies."