It’s getting to the point in the United States where murder is defined by the weapon. Shoot someone with a firearm, and it’s a homicide; mow them down with a Ford pick-up, and, well, that’s a gray area. At least it is getting more gray by the minute if you talk to Democrats.
Speaking of criminals, Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) ran this concept by Wolf Blitzer, and the CNN host didn’t even blink:
https://youtu.be/EESKZ8vzzbk
So, the idea advanced here by Menendez is that illegals who are stopped for driving under the influence should not be tagged as persons committing a criminal offense. One wonders if that would apply to run-of-the-mill legal Americans or just those who have jumped the border.
It’s all a plot by President Trump, according to Menendez and his cohorts. It began when Trump designated those who came into the country illegally as criminals when he should have just labeled them “future Democrat voters.” This so-called “zero tolerance” policy by Trump is the issue here – not the number of illegals who break U.S. law.
Reality and ICE Statistics
So, let’s take a moment to look at the facts. In FY 2018 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dealt with 80,730 offenses of illegals driving under the influence. But wait – there’s more: “By far, the largest percentage of aliens arrested by ICE are convicted criminals (66 percent), followed by immigration violators with pending criminal charges at the time of their arrest (21 percent),” ICE reported. This tells us that more than half of these illegals driving the highways and byways around America were already convicted of a crime.
The Dems just don’t like these numbers.
However, what’s really at issue and ticking off the Democrats is something called “administrative arrests.” These are defined by ICE as “the arrest of an alien for a civil violation of U.S. immigration laws, which is subsequently adjudicated by an immigration judge or through other administrative processes.” In 2016, there were 110,104 administrative arrests of illegals, 143,470 in 2017, and a whopping 158,581 in 2018. The Dems just don’t like these numbers. It makes them look bad and brands their narrative that illegals commit no more crime than average Americans as nothing more than fake news. So, they figure the best course of action is to change the statistics. There you go. That will fix everything.
Tell that to the family of 22-year-old Pierce Corcoran. The young Tennessean was killed when Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo -- illegal and driving without a license or registration – crashed into Corcoran, killing him. In this case, it wasn’t DUI but “criminally negligent homicide.”
Just last year Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson and his Uber driver were victims of another illegal alien car killing. This time Manuel Orrego-Savala of Guatemala – who was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.239 or .08 over the limit – was apprehended and charged with two counts of vehicular homicide as well as fleeing the scene of an accident. Orrego-Savala ran over the two men, then sped off.
Circling back to the Honorable Mr. Menendez of New Jersey, illegal aliens should be considered criminal only if they kill someone with their car. Otherwise, it’s just an everyday DUI that should be swept under the rug, an administrative matter of no import.
Democrats do have a way of trying to re-define things that are obvious to the rest of us. Remember, “It depends what the meaning of IS is?” But playing with statistics and blaming Trump for the number of illegal immigrant crimes committed in the United States will ultimately sound very hollow to those who believe their eyes and ears and eschew those who tell them what to think or say.
At some point, the Dems need to stop with the talking points and get with reality. Otherwise, they may find themselves all alone on the side of the political road with nowhere to go and no one around to listen to their nonsense. And that can be a very lonely road, indeed – at least until a drunk driver comes along.
