A retired Border Patrol agent warns US officials have no idea who they are letting into the country at the porous southern border. Yet growing efforts on the state level to allow local police to arrest and detain illegal aliens are being vigorously opposed by Democrats and their allies.
Arizona Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs on March 4 vetoed the Arizona Border Invasion Act, a bill passed by the Republican-led legislature. The legislation “would have made it a class 1 misdemeanor to cross the state’s southern border anywhere but at the ports of entry and allowed local police officers to arrest migrants suspected of violating the act. Those convicted of a first offense would have faced a six-month jail sentence unless they agreed to return to Mexico voluntarily,” The Arizona Mirror reported.
“This bill does not secure our border, will be harmful for communities and businesses in our state, and burdensome for law enforcement personnel and the state judicial system,” Hobbs wrote in defense of her veto. “Further, this bill presents significant constitutional concerns and would be certain to mire the state in costly and protracted litigation.”
A Murdered Woman in Georgia
Grand Canyon State Republicans are not alone in seeking local law enforcement solutions to a problem the Biden administration intentionally ignores. A federal judge on Feb. 29 blocked a new Texas law from going into effect that would have given police broad authority to arrest illegals in the Lone Star State. The Georgia House on Feb. 29 passed a similar bill. That effort was galvanized by the Feb. 22 murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien.
A leading Latino Democrat in Georgia denounced the legislation as capitalizing on a high-profile crime for political purposes.
“I have witnessed again and again, ambitious representatives and senators use fear as a strategy to attain and maintain electoral office,” state Rep. Pedro Marin, “who is the longest-serving Latino member of the House,” said of the bill, the Associated Press reported.
“Fixing policy in the face of unspeakable tragedy is not politics,” Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines asserted, AP related. “It’s doing the right thing to ensure something like this never occurs again.”
The bottom line is that pro-massive immigration advocates do not want the act of entering and remaining in the United States illegally to be a crime. Amazingly, this even applies to the traffickers.
Can’t Even Crack Down on Human Smuggling of Illegal Aliens
Florida in 2023 passed a bill that would make human smuggling a third-degree felony. Surely, no responsible person would have a problem with such legislation? Think again.
(Photo by Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
“In July, the Farmworker Association of Florida, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups, sued the state over the transportation provision of the new law,” The Miami Herald reported in September. These would be the organizations keen on cheap labor.
“Plaintiffs argue that the law causes extreme harm to people who regularly travel between Florida and surrounding states, including seasonal agricultural workers, faith leaders and service providers who arrange transportation for people with legal and medical appointments in Florida,” the paper wrote. In other words, an entire shadow underworld marked by the cruelty of child labor and sexual slavery would be negatively affected.
Even more disturbingly, the Mexican government intervened on behalf of a Mexican national arrested for human smuggling in the Sunshine State. Raquel López Aguilar, “an undocumented father of two from the state of Chiapas living in Tampa and working as a roofer,” was arrested Aug. 21 “after a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled him over because the van he was driving had window tints ‘obviously darker’ than the legal limit and large cracks on the windshield,” a police report stated, The Herald detailed.
“López Aguilar and all six of the van’s passengers had ‘entered the United States illegally,’ according to the report. The adults provided Mexican IDs, and a 7-year-old was identified by his full name and birthday. Aguilar and a passenger had been previously deported, the report states … ‘Mr. López Aguilar advised he knew some occupants entered the United States illegally and assumed the others did as well,’ reads the police report.”
Cue the outrage from Mexico: The new Florida law “will affect the human rights of thousands of people, Mexican girls and boys, exacerbating hostile situations that could result in hate crimes against the migrant community,” the nation’s Foreign Relations Department declared.
Local unhappiness took a decidedly more selfish bent. “I am not a fan of open borders,” Tim Conlan, who “runs a roofing company in Jacksonville,” told CBS News in January as part of a disapproving article on Aguilar’s arrest. “But I am a fan of putting people to work in this community who are contributing to the community. There’s got to be a way to get them into this system where they get paid a fair wage, and they pay their fair taxes, and everybody gets back to work.” Conlan was upset because he is finding it harder to get cheap workers for his business.
“Aguilar is facing four felony counts for driving a group of roofers in a work van from a job in Georgia, along with a misdemeanor count of driving without a valid license,” CBS observed, as if none of what it just described was criminal. The man was knowingly transporting illegal aliens across state lines.
“Historically … we’ve had plenty of crews,” Conlan told the network. “In the last year our crew count has been cut in half.” Amid the self-interest there lies a frightening truth: Totally unvetted illegal aliens are flooding into local American communities.
Retired Border Patrol agent Christopher Harris on March 7 explained to the Washington Examiner just how brittle the oversight process is at the chaotic southern border.
“Harris said one day, after all record checks came back clear for a man who claimed asylum, as he was walking out the door, in Spanish, he said, ‘I thought those five homicides would show up.’ Agents stopped him, and, through the El Salvadoran Consulate, agents found out he was indeed charged with five murders in his country,” the paper reported.
“Border agents have reported a surge in fake documents being used during processing or none at all,” The Examiner noted. Jose Ibarra, 26, the illegal alien accused of murdering Laken Riley, is said to have utilized this approach. Ibarra “reportedly gave his Venezuelan identification number to authorities. It turned out to be incorrect,” the paper related.
How many more crimes will there have to be before local police on the scene are allowed to protect the community from the violent and homicidal amongst them?
