A former senior law enforcement adviser at the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama argued this week that sanctuary city policies are contributing to dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters between federal immigration agents and the public, pointing to a string of recent shootings in jurisdictions that limit cooperation with ICE.
Charles Marino made the comments Monday on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” according to a clip flagged by Breitbart News. He told host Elizabeth Vargas that cities barring state and local police from working alongside federal immigration authorities are removing the uniformed presence that normally deters confrontations.
‘It Creates the Perfect Storm’
Vargas had raised a series of incidents — the Renee Good and Alex Pretti cases, along with shootings in Maine and Texas. Marino responded that every location the host listed, including one in Austin, is a sanctuary city.
“You don’t have state or local law enforcement on the scene when these incidents are actually occurring, because they’re prevented by local politicians from working alongside ICE,” he said, adding that even officers who are not directly enforcing immigration law are simply not present. In his view, that absence “creates many of the dangerous situations that we see unfolding here.”
Marino described a volatile dynamic in which federal agents operate in unmarked vehicles and without the visual cues — marked squad cars, uniforms — that signal to the public who is making contact.
“There’s no uniformed presence, there’s no deterrence, there [are] no marked police vehicles, for example, so many of these subjects aren’t sure in the first place who’s engaging them from the beginning,” he said, calling the mix “the perfect storm.”
He also suggested a practical consequence for local authorities: because they were not on the scene and do not work with ICE, “they really don’t have any equities in being part of the investigation,” even as some cities now want a role in reviewing what happened.
Criticism of Federal Transparency
Marino’s critique was not limited to local officials. Earlier in the segment, he said there is “a lack of transparency” from the federal government regarding its uses of force — a point that cuts against the agencies whose enforcement he otherwise defended for operating without local backup.
The tension he described reflects a broader, years-long fight over sanctuary policies, in which state and local leaders argue that restricting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement protects residents and preserves trust in local police, while critics counter that it leaves federal agents isolated in the field.
Marino’s résumé gives his criticism added weight in the debate: he served as DHS senior law enforcement adviser during the Obama administration, and his assessment now lands in a political environment where uses of force by federal agents have become a flashpoint.
His claim that deadly force is being used “more and more” was offered as his opinion, not backed by statistics during the segment. Breitbart News published the exchange in its clips section, with correspondent Ian Hanchett credited.
What Remains Unresolved
Whether sanctuary policies have a measurable effect on violent encounters is disputed, and the cases Marino cited are still contested in the public sphere. What the former adviser offered was an operational argument: that a visible, familiar police presence can change how a stop unfolds, and that removing it may raise the risk of escalation.
The segment illustrates how the sanctuary debate has moved beyond questions of immigration status and into questions of officer safety and public safety — an argument that both supporters and opponents of the policies have used to press their case in recent years.
Marino’s remarks came on the same day Vargas was covering a cluster of incidents that have drawn national attention, the kind of segment where a former federal official is often brought in to explain how enforcement is supposed to work and where it breaks down.
For now, the debate he described offers no easy resolution: cities that limit cooperation with ICE say they are acting within their rights and protecting their communities, while federal officials and their defenders say the result is a vacuum that puts agents and civilians alike in danger in the moment that matters most.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/09/22/fmr-obama-dhs-adviser-sanctuaries-create-many-dangerous-deadly-force-situations/