Opposition to a border wall is opposition to public safety

Open borders cost innocent lives.

The battle between the Congressional Democrats and the Trump administration continues over the construction of a border wall along the U.S./Mexican border.

Many political battles are fought over hypothetical arguments.  This debate, however, is well-grounded in cold, hard, irrefutable facts and in the deaths of far too many innocent people, who have fallen victim to aliens who entered the United States illegally, often repeatedly.

Let me be clear, in my judgement, the Democrats have left the administration with no choice but to take the action of shutting down a part of the government.  As a former INS agent I can certainly empathize with the federal employees.  All too frequently the employees of the government suffer from the bad decisions of our political leaders.  However, America faces many threats and challenges that are the direct result of multiple failures of the immigration system and our nation must finally address these failures beginning with securing our borders.

The most critical issues that the federal government must address are national security and public safety.

On January 3, 2019 I participated in an interview of Fox & Friends First to discuss the senseless murder of 33 year old police officer Ronil Singh, from Newman, California, by a citizen of Mexico who was allegedly an illegal alien: 32 year old Gustavo Perez-Arriaga.

The Washington Post’s December 29, 2018 article, Suspect, 7 others, arrested in fatal shooting of California police officer, noted that this arrest that has sparked a debate about California’s sanctuary policies began with this excerpt:

The arrest Friday of a man in the shooting death of a California police officer has renewed criticism of sanctuary laws, with a local sheriff suggesting that the state's efforts to protect undocumented immigrants could have contributed to the killing.

Gustavo Perez Arriaga, a 32-year-old undocumented immigrant, was charged with homicide in connection with the shooting death of 33-year-old Newman police officer Ronil Singh, according to law enforcement.

Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson assailed sanctuary laws that limit state and local governments' cooperation with federal immigration agents, but he did not detail how those rules applied to Perez’s case or how they would have prevented Singh’s death.

He said Perez Arriaga publicized his gang affiliation and had been arrested twice for driving under the influence, but did not provide additional details about those arrests.

Let’s answer the question posed by the reporter in this case, as to how sanctuary policies impacted the murder of the police officer who, I must add, had, years earlier, legally immigrated to the United States from his native Fiji.  It is clear that so-called “sanctuary policies” actually serve as “magnet policies” that encourage aliens to enter the United States illegally and then seek out those jurisdictions that promise to harbor and shield these aliens who would be subject to deportation (removal) from ICE.

Crime scene investigators who investigate crimes first attempt to find out how a criminal gained access to the location where the crime was committed.  For illegal aliens the issue is how they came to enter the United States and evade detection.

That news article went on to report that Sheriff Christianson stated: Perez Arriaga had entered the U.S. at Arizona, and when he was arrested in Bakersfield, California, he was attempting to flee back to his home country, Mexico.

One of the advantages that alien criminals and terrorists have is their ability to evade the “long arm of the law” by fleeing from U.S. law enforcement authorities by going back to their home countries, where extradition may be difficult, if not impossible.

The Washington Post article also included this important excerpt:

In addition to Perez Arriaga’s arrest, Christianson said that Perez Arriaga’s brother, 25-year-old Adrian Virgen, and a co-worker, 27-year-old Erik Razo Quiroz, were arrested Thursday for allegedly helping Perez Arriaga escape after Singh was shot. Virgen and Quiroz are also in the country illegally, Christianson said.

Also arrested on charges of aiding and abetting were Bernabe Madrigal Castaneda, 59, Erasmo Villegas, 36, and Maria Luisa Moreno, 57, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office said. They were arrested inside the residence where Perez Arriaga was apprehended.

On Friday afternoon, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department said it had arrested two more people for allegedly aiding Perez Arriaga in his attempt to escape: his girlfriend, 30-year-old Ana Leyde Cervantes, and another of his brothers, 34-year-old Conrado Virgen Mendoza.

“Anyone who aids and helps this criminal was going to go to jail,” Christianson said.

If there was true justice, the politicians who enacted the sanctuary policies should also be held accountable for their role in obstructing the federal government from enforcing our immigration laws that are critical for national security and public safety.

In point of fact, the terror attacks of 9/11 and other terror attacks launched by aliens who had, in one way or another, gained entry into the United States, were all made possible by multiple failures of the dysfunctional immigration system.

Let us remember that there have been a long list of Congressional hearings and reports from the GAO (Government Accountability Office), the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) and the OIG (Office of the Inspector General) about the costs of illegal immigration and the lack of effectiveness where drones on the border are concerned.

In fact, my recent article, Why Trump’s Wall Is A Must included information contained in an OIG report and other sources that illustrate just how big a waste of money UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or drones are.  Yet the Democrats want to purchase drones and not a wall because, as I noted in my recent article, Sanctuary Country - Immigration failures by design, the goal of these duplicitous politicians is to create the mere illusion of addressing the failures of the immigration system but not actually fix them.

For these politicians, the immigration system is actually a delivery system that delivers an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable labor, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists, an unlimited number of clients for immigration lawyers and a virtually limitless supply of foreign students.

Many folks believe that the Democrats are determined to flood America with immigrants who will eventually vote for Democrats. While there is some likely truth in that assessment, what is ignored is that in reality--as more and more Americans suffer wage suppression from foreign workers--more Americans who are driven into poverty, will be driven to vote for Democratic candidates; not unlike the cattle who are moved in massive cattle drives.

I wrote about the destruction of the middle class through open borders in my article, Open Borders Facilitate America’s Race To The Bottom.

I frequently address the threats posed by terrorists. While not all fatalities are the result of terror attacks in the United States, indeed a far greater number of people are killed in the United States each year by aliens who commit a wide array of crimes that include drunk driving to crimes involving violence and narcotics.

Frequently the casualties are among the members of ethnic immigrant communities, not just from Latin America, but within such communities whose residents came to the United States from their home countries from around the world.  Crime is not limited to any race, religion or ethnicity.  Human nature is human nature.  Just as all people bleed red, every race, every religion and every ethnicity have members who constitute “The good, the bad and the ugly.”

America’s immigration laws, as I have frequently noted, do not discriminate as to race, religion or ethnicity but are intended to keep out aliens whose presence would pose a threat to national security, public safety, public health and the overall well-being of our nation and our citizens.

To substantiate that point, Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182--a statute contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)--enumerates the categories of aliens who are to be excluded. Among these classes of aliens who are to be prevented from entering the United States are aliens who suffer from dangerous communicable diseases or extreme mental illness.

Additionally, convicted felons, human rights violators, war criminals, terrorists and spies are to be excluded as well as aliens who would seek unlawful employment thus displacing American workers or driving down the wages of American workers who are similarly employed and aliens who would likely become public charges.

Yet the leadership of the Democratic Party opposes the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.  Some Democratic Party mayors and governors have declared their towns, cities and states to be “Sanctuaries” that are eager to harbor and shield illegal aliens from detection from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Unbelievably, many Democrats have called for the termination of ICE altogether.

Is there any wonder why they are determined to stop the administration from finally constructing an effective wall along the dangerous U.S./Mexican border?

The cynical Democrats proposed the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), invoking the imagery of the “American Dream” and were so compelled to exploit this imagery that they included the dreaded word “alien” in that legislative disaster.

Meanwhile they have created a nightmare for ever so many Americans and lawful immigrants such as Police Officer Singh, who paid the “ultimate price" and whose wife and child, family members, friends and colleagues have all been made to pay an unbearable price.

SOURCE 

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Oregon: Portland is becoming the sort of hellhole that Leftist management routinely produces

Unarmed cops, an 18% murder rise, and vigilante justice

It was a big year in Portland where the murder rate rose 18.6%. That was the perfect time for Portland’s progressive politburo to spend over $1 million on unarmed cops armed only with pepper spray.

There was a little bit of excitement when it was learned that their 200 hours of training would include “Taser Orientation” suggesting that they might be allowed to carry tasers. But Mayor Wheeler’s office explained that the weaponless cops weren’t being trained to use tasers, but “how to avoid being tased”.

Portlanders aren’t waiting for officers to show up and shout, “Don’t tase me, bro”. Instead in a city overrun with crime, they’re increasingly taking matters and guns into their hands.

Of the 32 violent deaths in Portland last year, 5 were found to have been carried out in self-defense. That tops the 4 deaths that occurred as a result of shootings by those cops who still have their guns.

Richard R. Hanley showed up in the parking lot outside Timeless Tattoo. The California homeless bum had previously made the news when he was arrested for attacking his ex-girlfriend and her new beau with a metal chain. Hanley, already on probation for a domestic abuse and strangulation conviction, with six felony and seven misdemeanor priors, also pulled out huge clumps of a female deputy’s hair.

The repeat offender began setting up his tent in the parking lot. When a female catering manager asked him to stop, he attacked her. Joseph D. Vinci, a tattoo artist, intervened. Hanley pulled a knife and Vinci pulled a gun. And Hanley’s long reign of terror ended to the outcry of local pro-crime activists.

Portland's other homeless death had a much darker ending.

Dallas Boyd, a 29-year-old mother of a two-year-old, was strangled to death by a homeless man and her body was left to rot in his van. Like Hanley, the homeless killer had racked up nine felonies, six misdemeanors and 15 parole violations, including  third-degree assault, and first-degree robbery.

Homeless crime has become both routine and terrifying. One Portlander described being threatened with a machete on a children’s playground, and it’s taken the city’s crime problem to new levels.

15% of Portland’s violent deaths in 2018 involved the homeless in some way.

Portland property crimes rose 15% in 2017. Its property crime rates easily outpace Boston and Denver, and put it on a par with dangerous cities like Atlanta.  Its homeless blight has put Portland on the same path as San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Portland’s Downtown Clean and Safe had picked up less than 9,897 used needles in 2015. This year it's 39,000. Garbage and biohazards have also increased.

Car thefts are up 45% in two years. In Mayor Wheeler’s State of the City address this year, he mentioned a “97 percent increase in stolen vehicle calls” in 5 years. There was also a "64 percent increase in unwanted persons calls and a 32 percent increase in disorder calls."

But Mayor Wheeler emphasized Portland was working on a more “inclusive” and diverse” police force, even as he admitted that the city was caught in a crime wave where, “assaults, homicides, sex offenses, etc. – have increased and are rising at a higher rate than last year; property crimes have also increased and are rising at a higher rate than last year.”

“Chief Outlaw leads a bureau with fewer officers today than a decade ago, despite a 10 percent increase in Portland’s population,” Wheeler whined.

Mayor Wheeler had picked Danielle Outlaw as the first African-American police chief. Outlaw was meant to be the face of Portland’s new inclusive and diverse force. She inherited the thankless job of trying to control homeless crime, without offending homeless advocates, and reining in political street violence without offending Antifa. And soon white hipsters were outraged at Chief Outlaw’s contemptuous dismissal of Antifa as schoolyard brats who, “come with the intention to fight. And then you get mad because I kicked your butt. And then you go back and you wail off and whine and complain.”

Chief Outlaw had also cleared the Occupy ICE encampment without the mayor’s approval, after he had insisted that the police should do nothing to interfere with the harassment of ICE employees.

Portland’s white radicals soon began accusing the city’s first African-American police chief of being a white supremacist while campaigning to get her fired.

“The fact that I, as a very obvious African American female police chief, have been accused by those within that group or those who support that group, as being a supporter and protector of those who are believed to be white supremacists—if that's even the case—is ridiculous. Right?” she asked.

Ridiculous is the only way that anything works in Portland.

Mayor Wheeler’s virtue signaling is being ignored by his own police chief while citizens are taking the law into their own hands. The tattoo parlor was only one of five self-defense killings in Portland.

Self-defense killings made up a sixth of deaths by violence in the past year. These included a U-Haul employee shooting an armed robber, a transgender man shot by a homeless woman after he tried to stab her with a knife, and a FedEx driver who killed a man in a fight over racial slurs.

The U-Haul robber had 9 previous convictions, including robbery, burglary and rape.

These are the warning signs of a dysfunctional city spinning out of control.

Mayor Hale, Wheeler’s predecessor, who turned Portland into a homeless encampment zone by refusing to enforce laws against bums setting up tents on public streets, decided not to run for reelection. His predecessor, Mayor Adams, is enmeshed in a sex scandal which involved an underage boy, sexual harassment, blackmail, and allegations of using an employee for sexual procurement.

Mayor Wheeler won’t go out with a sex scandal, but like his predecessor, he’s unable to reconcile the demands of virtue signaling in a leftist city with the practical problems caused by its implementation. The leftist solutions he’s tried, spending more on homeless services, demilitarizing and diversifying the police, have only backfired.

Portland, like countless other Democrat urban strongholds, proved that the more money is spent on homeless services, the worse homelessness becomes. Disarming police officers leads to more people taking the law into their own hands. And black cops will enforce the law just like white cops. They’re also less cowed by political correctness and more willing to speak their minds than their white counterparts.

The city government has turned Portland into a miserable hellhole, but individuals are stepping up.

In the Montavilla area, the Montavilla Initiative has been organizing neighborhood watches, foot patrols and monitoring area crime. Pro-crime and homeless advocates have accused them of being "vigilantes", but area residents see them as filling a vital need. It’s one of eight patrol groups in the area.

The Initiative describes a neighborhood needle exchange program degenerating into “human waste in neighbors’ yards, a large vehicle hosting drug deals in the parking lot of the exchange, heroin users shooting up and passing out and then driving off intoxicated, people urinating and defecating in public, clients shooting up in neighbors’ yards, even having sex on a neighbor’s front porch.”

It’s no wonder that Portland’s formerly hot housing market is cooling off and home values are falling. As housing prices increase, not everyone wants to pay record prices to live next to a needle exchange.

The escape from Portland has begun

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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