By Kevin D. Williamson
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Considering the sundry enthusiasms upon which government
at all level spends our money — Harry Reid’s bovine literary interests, helping
out those poor struggling people who own Boeing — it is remarkable that the job
of apprehending a known felon, once deported from the United States and
illegally present in Texas, fell to volunteers in Brooks County, near the
Mexican border. Brooks County, like many other border areas, is overrun with
illegal immigrants, and the cost of burying those illegals who die in transit,
which can run into the six figures annually, has forced the county to cut back
on regular law enforcement. And thus we have the volunteer deputies who brought
in the felon, who after he injured his ankle had been been abandoned by the
coyotes — professional human traffickers — who had brought him across the
border. The volunteers were in the process of working a 26-hour shift — that’s
26 hours, not a typo. Consider for a moment that the cost of illegals’ breaking
the law is so high that enforcing the law has been handed over to unpaid
volunteers.
Similar scenes are playing out across the border. Nearby
Duval County, Texas, was the scene of a dramatic car chase when a truckload of
illegals was spotted by police, who determined that the vehicle was outfitted
with a fraudulent license plate. Two were killed and a dozen injured in the
pursuit. (Many years ago, Duval County enjoyed the services of an elected
Democratic sheriff whose grandson is a familiar figure at National
Review Online.) Nearly 200,000 illegals have crossed into Texas’s Rio Grande Valley
this year, and the cartels that oversee the coyote operations have the local
landowners terrorized into compliance. This includes the trafficking of minors
and others destined for the sex trade; perversely, the Department of Homeland
Security has been known to send minors trafficked across the border on to their
final destinations, thus “completing the criminal mission” of the traffickers,
in the words of one federal judge.
Far from the Mexican border, in the South Carolina town
of Lexington, Sheriff James Metts is a crusader against illegal immigration,
one who successfully persuaded the federal government to allow his deputies to
question those they believe to be illegally present in the country and, when
warranted, to begin deportation proceedings on the feds’ behalf. In June,
Sheriff Metts was indicted by a grand jury on charges of taking bribes from a
local restaurateur to release illegals in his employ. According to the
indictment, the bribes came from Gregorio M. Leon, owner of the San Jose
Mexican restaurant. Both men are well known and, until recently, were admired
for their community spirit. One wonders why Mr. Leon would bother with a bribe;
if he were hiring illegals, he’d likely receive gentle treatment from the Obama
administration. While talking tough about cracking down on those who employ
illegals, the administration has in fact been systematically reducing penalties
handed down for that felony, according to an inspector general’s report. Fines
have been reduced by as much as two-thirds or even four-fifths; there are
millions of illegals working in the United States, but there is nothing even
approaching a proportional number — or a rounding error on it — of businessmen
serving time for employing them.
Democrats, always on the lookout for an opportunity to
swell the dependency rolls, turn a blind eye to this invasion; their main
interest is in normalizing the status of illegals as quickly as possible.
Republicans, apparently determined to live up to the caricature of being unable
to tell one brown Spanish-speaking person from another, are in a panic that
they will lose the Hispanic vote unless they turn a blind eye to what is not
only systematic lawlessness but an all-out assault on the sovereignty of the
country. Little wonder, then, that federal plans to relocate illegals have been
met with vigorous and sometimes rowdy protests by locals.
There is perhaps no one who appreciates the meaning of a
border better than an illegal immigrant. The line that divides the United
States from what is south of it is the most significant demarcation in their
lives. And while it is no argument for failing to enforce the law, one cannot
blame those who are willing to risk and endure so much to escape life in
Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, etc. But we can blame those who fail to enforce
the law. We can blame the Obama administration and corrupt law-enforcement
officials for actively subverting the law. And we can certainly blame
businessmen who encourage chaos, violence, and human trafficking in the service
of their own narrow and slightly pathetic interests: Surely, busboys and
dishwashers are not so scarce in South Carolina that one must effectively get
into bed with the cartels in order to get the tables cleared.
Unhappily, the combination of interests linked to
immigration lawlessness — the progressives’ dependency agenda and the Chamber
of Commerce’s self-interest — make this a very difficult battle to win. On the
matter of illegal immigration, as on so many similar issues, we are effectively
governed by criminals. But if we had half as much appreciation for the
importance of national borders as do those who are illegally crossing them did,
we would make this one of the top items on our national agenda. We may have
compassion for the citizens of Mexico, but our duty is to the citizens of these
United States. On Friday we had fireworks; on Monday, we require action.
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