Former DHS senior adviser Charles Marino told Newsmax's "The Count" that Kaitlyn Tracey, the Canadian woman charged with slapping a teenage girl on a New Jersey boardwalk over the Fourth of July weekend, should serve time behind bars before being deported.

Marino blamed sanctuary jurisdictions for pushing Immigration and Customs Enforcement toward expedited removal rather than criminal accountability.

Tracey, 33, is being held at Delaney Hall in Newark on an immigration detainer after Point Pleasant Beach police charged her with simple assault, endangering the welfare of a child, harassment, and obstruction.

Federal officials say she entered the United States on April 14, 2024, and remained after her visa expired Sept. 6, 2024.

DHS publicly labeled her the "Maple Leaf Menace" on X.

Marino said the criminal and immigration cases are being severed in a way he considers a policy failure.

"Here's how the system should work," he said. "She should have to pay behind bars for smacking that young woman in the face and then be deported."

The problem, he argued, begins where local cooperation ends.

"But then you enter sanctuary cities, and the way they undercut ICE, the way they won't notify them about releases, the way they won't allow them in jails, and the way they don't allow the state and local law enforcement agencies to work alongside them, or even communicate with them," Marino said.

"So that person will be released back out on the street."

That, he said, is why federal officers are moving straight to removal.

"That's why ICE, from the very beginning, without forcing this woman to pay the penalty she should pay behind bars, is just going to move for the expedited removal of her back to Canada."

The friction Marino described has driven recent litigation and legislation, including a Justice Department suit against New York over restrictions on federal immigration officers.

Tracey's husband, Matthew Geroni, set up a GoFundMe for her legal defense, but the platform removed it, telling Fox News Digital its terms of service bar fundraisers for the legal defense of violent crimes.

Marino framed the boardwalk case as a test of whether accountability travels with a deportation.

"But really, you should have to pay and face some type of consequence here for breaking U.S. laws, whether federal, state, or local," he said.

"But our system has failed in that way because we've allowed sanctuary cities to get away with a lot of nonsense."

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