Philadelphias progressive district attorney is once again under fire for shielding criminal aliens from accountability while keeping taxpayers in the dark about who, exactly, is benefiting from his policies.
According to the Daily Caller, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasners office is now refusing to disclose the criminal charges of foreign nationals receiving free legal assistance from a special immigration counsel, despite having released similar information in prior years. Krasners team told the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records on Tuesday that it can no longer provide a list of those charges because it supposedly does not maintain such records in a usable form, a claim that comes after the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) previously revealed that migrants charged with serious violent crimes were receiving this taxpayer-funded help.
The immigration counsel position, created by Krasner in 2018 to help non-citizens avoid convictions that could trigger deportation, was one of several soft-on-crime initiatives he rolled out after left-wing billionaire George Soros backed his first two campaigns with $1.9 million.
Larry Krasners 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 OBrien 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 Krasners staff is now trying to hide what it is doing [by] engaging in sketchy record-keeping practices. His criticism underscores a central concern for many conservatives: that Krasners office is blurring the line between prosecutor and defense counsel, prioritizing the interests of criminal non-citizens over the safety and rights of law-abiding residents.
Previously, the district attorneys office had no problem turning over the very information it now claims it cannot produce. The same type of list the DCNF is currently seeking was provided in earlier years to a legal organization that has since joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and those records showed that former Immigration Counsel Caleb Arnold advised migrants charged with murder, rape and other violent offenses, contradicting public assurances from Krasner and Arnold that the immigration counsel would be limited to low-level cases. Those revelations painted a starkly different picture from the reformist rhetoric Krasner used to sell his policies to the public and the media.
Now, Krasners staff is refusing to reveal the charges faced by foreign defendants whose legal bills are effectively being subsidized by Philadelphia taxpayers. At the same time, the district attorney has repeatedly boasted that he would not hesitate to put federal immigration agents in handcuffs if he decides their enforcement actions cross a legal line, signaling where his sympathies lie in the clash between immigration enforcement and progressive activism. 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.
The current immigration counsel, Stefanie Costa, who replaced Arnold in 2024, has remained silent in the face of questions about her offices work. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF, even as her record-keeping practices have become central to the dispute over transparency.
Krasners office told the state that Costa cannot provide the requested records because her recordkeeping practices differ from those employed previously, according to a Tuesday letter urging the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records to deny the DCNFs request. The letter asserts that Costa keeps digital spreadsheets of cases but cannot release them because they contain the names and contact information of victims, including minor victims, as well as other details that the office claims could jeopardize a fair trial or violate legal protections. The office further argued that Costas spreadsheets are not organized by calendar year, making it impossible, they say, to extract the information in the format requested.
Before Costa took over, however, the immigration counsel office had already built a track record that alarmed critics of Krasners approach. As previously reported by the DCNF, the office consulted migrants charged with sex assault, rape, rape of a child, forcible rape, arson, strangulation, robbery, aggravated assault, murder and homicide by vehicle, and the district attorneys own website acknowledges that more than 400 cases have been reviewed since the role was created.
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 ones immigration status, the website says, a statement that sits uneasily beside the list of grave offenses tied to past consultations.
For OBrien, a former immigration judge and Department of Homeland Security official, the pattern is unmistakable. In essence, Krasner has turned the District Attorneys office into a taxpayer funded cartel that facilitates criminal activity by foreign nationals, OBrien 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.
Krasner, who took office in 2018, has championed a suite of lenient criminal justice policies, including ending cash bail for most offenses and aggressively reducing incarceration, moves that have coincided with surging violent crime and record homicides in Philadelphia. He drew fresh outrage in September after his office downgraded charges against a man accused of fatally shooting a woman on video from murder to manslaughter, reinforcing critics claims that his ideological agenda routinely overrides public safety.
Despite presiding over all-time-record-high homicides in 2021, Krasner secured a third term in November against a Republican challenger, a testament to the political strength of progressive criminal justice reform even as its real-world consequences continue to raise alarms among conservatives and crime victims alike. Former DCNF reporter Jason Hopkins contributed to this story.
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