Investor's Business Daily, August 16th, 2007
Illegal Immigration: As Elvira Arellano goes to Washington to plead her case for sanctuary, another illegal alien who benefited from it stands accused of a heinous crime. Whom should our laws protect?
For the past year, Arellano has been holed up in Chicago's Aldaberto United Methodist Church. It has granted her sanctuary from federal authorities seeking to enforce the laws she has broken, starting with illegally entering the U.S. from her native Mexico.
Arellano was deported from the U.S. in 1997 after trying to cross the border with fake papers. She came back and was arrested in December 2002 in a terrorist sting operation while she worked at Chicago's O'Hare airport under a false Social Security number. She was later convicted in federal court of Social Security fraud and ordered to leave the country.
Legally, the feds have the right to break down the doors of her storefront sanctuary. But to avoid a public relations nightmare, they've allowed her to flout federal law while others aid and abet. On Sept. 12, she says she will leave her sanctuary to go to Washington to have a prayer vigil, praying that Congress will end raids by immigration officials.
Arellano will take her 8-year-old son, an American citizen, with her, hoping the questionable concept of birthright citizenship will bolster the case for her and others like her to stay. We think she should be arrested and the deportation order executed.
Like Arellano, Jose Carranza, an illegal alien from Peru, should not have been in this country, much less on the streets of Newark, N.J., two weeks ago, when four students were forced to kneel against a wall in a schoolyard near their homes and then shot in the head at close range.
Carranza, who has a fake Social Security number, had already been indicted twice this year, charged with 31 counts surrounding the sexual assault of a 5-year-old child and nine stemming from a bar fight. He was put back on the streets after posting a meager $5,000 bond.
At no point was his immigration status checked and feds notified. New Jersey is one of the places where illegal aliens are granted sanctuary -- meaning local authorities aren't required and in some cases are forbidden from checking the immigration status of those they arrest.
"We certainly would have been inclined to place him in a removal proceeding however we came across him," said Marc Raimondi, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Given that he is alleged to have committed a very serious offense against a child, that would have put him on the top of our list."
New Jersey was also the scene of the conspiracy by the Fort Dix Six to attack a U.S. military base. After their capture, we learned that three of them had been in this country illegally for 23 years and altogether had been charged with 75 crimes. But at no time was their immigration status checked or the feds notified.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has proposed that the Congress that failed to pass immigration reform be called back into special session to pass a simple bill dealing with the issue of illegal aliens preying on American citizens and/or violating our laws.
The bill would require that no illegal alien criminal, by definition a flight risk, ever be released on bail to prey again on American citizens. The criminals should be detained until trial by federal authorities. Those who are convicted should be immediately and physically deported after serving their time.
The immigration status of all currently incarcerated federal, state and local prisoners should be checked, as should the status of all those arrested by state and local authorities. In cases where legal status cannot be confirmed, the feds should be notified. And in no cases should sanctuary be granted or allowed.
"I have faith I will be able to stay in this country with my son," says Arellano. We have faith the laws of the U.S. will one day be faithfully enforced.
