Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s staff is hiding the criminal records of migrants receiving free legal aid after the Daily Caller News Foundation previously exposed serious charges.
Krasner cannot disclose the foreign defendants’ charges because it no longer keeps such a list, his team told the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records Tuesday in response to a DCNF information request. Krasner created an immigration counsel role in 2018 to help foreigners avoid convictions that lead to deportation, one of many soft-on-crime reforms he implemented after leftist megadonor George Soros supported his first and second campaigns with $1.9 million.
“Larry Krasner’s office has repeatedly and carelessly violated fundamental ethics rules governing the practice of law by purporting to prosecute aliens while actually defending them, at taxpayer expense, from the immigration consequences of their crimes,” FAIR Deputy Executive Director Matthew O’Brien told the DCNF. “This kind of blatantly unethical behavior would result in the average lawyer being suspended from practice or disbarred. Therefore, it is no surprise that Krasner’s staff is now trying to hide what it is doing [by] engaging in sketchy record-keeping practices.”
The district attorney’s office provided the same list the DCNF is asking for in prior years, releasing it to a legal group that now belongs to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Those previous records showed former Immigration Counsel Caleb Arnold consulted migrants who were charged with murder, rape and other violent crimes, the DCNF reported. This contradicted Krasner and Arnold’s statements to the media that the immigration counsel would only assist low-level cases.
Krasner’s staff now refuses to disclose its foreign defendants’ charges to the taxpayers footing their legal expenses to keep them in the country. Meanwhile, the district attorney has repeatedly promised to put immigration agents in handcuffs if he deems their actions criminal.
“Together, we will ensure that all people are treated fairly by the justice system regardless of their immigration status,” Krasner said in 2018 while announcing the immigration counsel office. “This is also part of our overall effort to protect the most vulnerable and ensure they are able [to] participate as witnesses or complainants in the criminal justice system.”
Stefanie Costa, who replaced Arnold in 2024, did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
The attorney cannot provide the requested records because her “recordkeeping practices differ from those employed previously,” Krasner’s office wrote to the state in a Tuesday letter asking it to deny the DCNF’s request. Costa maintains digital spreadsheets of cases but cannot provide them because they contain “the names and contact information of victims, including minor victims,” information that could deprive the right to a fair trial and other legally protected details, the letter argues.
Costa’s spreadsheets also do not track the cases by calendar year, Krasner’s office said.
Before Costa started, the immigration counsel office consulted migrants charged with sex assault, rape, rape of a child, forcible rape, arson, strangulation, robbery, aggravated assault, murder and homicide by vehicle, the DCNF previously reported. The office has reviewed more than 400 cases since the immigration counsel role’s inception, according to the district attorney’s website.
“We believe the serious crimes must be punished, but we also believe that low-level and nonviolent crimes should not lead to deportation or necessarily risk one’s immigration status,” the website says.
But O’Brien, a former immigration judge and Department of Homeland Security official, says it is clear who the far-left prosecutor is really protecting.
“In essence, Krasner has turned the District Attorney’s office into a taxpayer funded cartel that facilitates criminal activity by foreign nationals,” O’Brien told the DCNF. “Rather than protecting the residents of the City of Brotherly Love from crime, Krasner is shielding foreign delinquents and deviants from due process of law.”
The district attorney took office in 2018 and enacted several lenient criminal justice policies, including ending cash bail for most crimes and reducing incarceration, the DCNF previously reported. He drew criticism in September for downgrading charges against a man accused of fatally shooting a woman on video from murder to manslaughter.
Krasner won a third term against a Republican challenger in November despite presiding over all-time-record-high homicides in Philadelphia in 2021.
Former DCNF reporter Jason Hopkins contributed to this story.
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