City Marshal Brian Pope's bizarre Oct. 7 press conference attacking then-sheriff candidate Mark Garber was the launching point of the sanctuary city rail in 2015’s sheriff’s race.
Since that conference, The IND has suspected that Pope organized the presser in collaboration with Garber's opponent in the sheriff's race, Scott Police Chief Chad Leger. During court proceedings with The IND, Pope has claimed a bogus ongoing immigration investigation exempts him from producing email records we requested as part of our own investigation into the authorship of the conference in question.
This clip from his video deposition, taped Dec. 28, shows that the investigation he claims, which has clearly not progressed in any substantive way, is based purely on bigoted assumptions.
In the email to Advocate reporter Lanie Lee Cook referenced in the video, Pope cites 611 outstanding warrants for undocumented immigrants, a number based entirely on the ethnicity attached to those offenders. Local law enforcement agencies have neither the authority nor the means to determine immigration status.
Pope is making an uneducated case.
According to a report emailed to Pope by a city court administrator, found as part of our records request, Pope's number is comprised of 531 offenders in a class designated "Other." He lumps that in with 80 "Spanish" to get to the 611 outstanding warrants for illegal immigrants he cites.
"My problem is with the illegal people," Pope says in the video below. Yet he can't determine how many, if any, of the people he's after are illegally here.