Patterico's Pontifications

8/20/2019

For The Umpteenth Time: Deport The Criminals First, And Make Sure They Can’t Re-Enter The US

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:12 pm



[guest post by Dana]

While we are discussing the situation with detained immigrants in ICE facilities, I read two reports today, and was left wondering how anyone could possibly object to simultaneously doing everything to tighten up security at the Southern border, come down on sanctuary cities, and most importantly, deport criminal aliens before anyone else. Does the open borders crowd believe that these criminal aliens shouldn’t be immediately deported? It seems like common sense that this specific group should be the priority of ICE deportations, not families who have been here for years, work hard, and already integrated into cities and towns across the nation.

First:

An illegal alien who was convicted in 2007 of sexually abusing a 7-year-old girl, who also had three convictions for driving under the influence, was removed from the country in 2013, but then reentered the United States in 2015 and was found in 2019—after a traffic stop—to be living near “a community swimming pool, elementary school, middle school, high school and nursery school.”

“Martin Mejia Ramos aka Ricardo Morales Rodriguez and Martin Jose Romes-Ramirez pleaded guilty May 10, 2019, to illegally re-entering the United States following an aggravated felony conviction,” said a statement from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.

“At the hearing, the court heard that in 2007, Ramos was convicted in Los Angeles, California, for continuous sexual abuse and lewd act upon a child,” said the statement. “He was ordered to serve six years in prison and required to register as a sex offender for life. He was removed from the country in 2013.

“In that case, Ramos had engaged in more than three sexual acts with a seven-year-old with whom he was residing,” the statement said. “The victim claimed Ramos had touched her vagina on multiple occasions and exposed himself to her. A physical examination revealed irritation in her vagina. His hair was also found in that area. Ramos had told her not to tell anyone and threatened to hit her if she did.

“Ramos had six other convictions, three of which were driving under the influence of alcohol,” said the statement from the U.S. attorney. “In one instance, he caused a traffic accident with two other vehicles. His blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit.

“Ramos illegally re-entered the United States Dec. 31, 2015,” said the statement. “On Jan. 30, 2019, authorities discovered Ramos in New Caney during a traffic stop, at which time he provided a false address. The investigation later revealed his residence was near a community swimming pool, elementary school, middle school, high school and nursery school.”

The second article is about a Maryland sanctuary city that released an illegal alien accused of rape despite an immigration detainer:

A suburban Maryland county with a notorious history as a sanctuary jurisdiction is facing criticism from federal authorities for releasing an illegal alien accused of rape despite an immigration detainer.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged a detainer on Aug. 12 with the Montgomery County (Maryland) Detention Center on unlawfully present Salvadoran national Rodrigo Castro-Montejo following his arrest for rape and other related charges,” reads a statement from ICE’s Maryland office to Blaze Media. “On Aug. 13, the facility failed to honor the detainer, and released Castro from custody.”

According to local WJLA-TV, Montgomery County’s policy allows jail officials to contact ICE if the suspect has committed a “serious crime” and has had an ICE detainer filed previously. ICE says that local officials violated the policy in order to release the suspect.

The WJLA story details the factors that led to Castro-Montejo’s arrest. Castro-Montejo is a Salvadoran national residing in Florida. His accuser says that before he came to Maryland for a wedding last weekend, he had organized a meetup with her on social media. She claims the two went out drinking and dancing, she blacked out, then woke up to to him raping her.

Castro-Montejo was charged with second-degree rape and second-degree assault Saturday, August 10, and was later granted a $10,000 bail by a judge. He posted the 10 percent, $1,000 bond and walked out.

Neither of these criminals would have been here to commit the atrocious crimes for which they were charged, and do the unspeakable damage that they did had our Southern border not been so porous.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

38 Responses to “For The Umpteenth Time: Deport The Criminals First, And Make Sure They Can’t Re-Enter The US”

  1. I’d love to hear what the 2020 Dem candidates think about these situations.

    Dana (fdf131)

  2. 1. The Dems start from the presumption that we owe non-citizen aliens (but I repeat myself) something. That’s where they lose me.

    Gryph (08c844)

  3. At what point can we victim blame in some of these cases? Yes justice is warranted, but how long have people known to suspects harbored, advocated for, favored and selected for employment and business patronage over their fellow citizen?

    urbanleftbehind (fe9f57)

  4. I want someone to ask them specifically about these kinds of situations and pin them down for a commitment to deport them first, and then ask them how they intend to prevent them from re-entering the country.

    Dana (fdf131)

  5. Ubl,

    Are you talking about criminal aliens, specifically, or all illegals?

    Dana (fdf131)

  6. Certainly more the ones I call felonious/injurious criminal illegal aliens. A lot of their offenses tend to happen “in-community”.

    urbanleftbehind (fe9f57)

  7. And that is a big problem: no one wants to go to the police. They’ve been both trained to fear authorities, as well as having reason to fear them. It’s a catch-22, and I’m not sure what the answer is. But, as long as our border remains porous, this will just continue to happen and will be easily overlooked by the ones shouting the loudest about no wall, open borders, etc.

    Dana (fdf131)

  8. and then ask them how they intend to prevent them from re-entering the country.

    “Martin Mejia Ramos aka Ricardo Morales Rodriguez and Martin Jose Romes-Ramirez:
    You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty.
    Time will pass and seasons will come and go.
    Spring with its wavin’ green grass and heaps of sweet-smellin’ flowers on every hill and in every dale.
    Then sultry Summer, with her shimmerin’ heat-waves on the baked horizon.
    And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin’ brown and golden under a sinkin’ sun.
    And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.
    But you won’t be here to see any of ’em; not by a damn sight, because it’s the order of this court that you be took to the nearest tree and hanged by the neck til you’re dead, dead, dead, you olive-colored son of a billy goat.”

    SO ORDERED: Phantly Roy Bean, Jr.
    Judge

    nk (dbc370)

  9. Wow that ruling is way better than the Judge Roy Bean roller coaster in Arlington, TX.

    Dustin (6d7686)

  10. It might be bowdlerized a little, Dustin. The one I remember from when I was a kid included “sheep-stealing” and “chili pepper-eating” in the judge’s description of the condemned.

    nk (dbc370)

  11. Reading about the Judge…he was a character, to say the least

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Bean

    There is this tidbit

    Langtry did not have a jail and all cases were settled by fines. Bean refused to send the state any part of the fines, and kept all of the money.[11] In most cases the fines were made for the exact amount the accused person was carrying. During his term as a judge, Bean is known to have sentenced only two men to hang, one of whom escaped. Horse thieves, who were often sentenced to death in other jurisdictions, were always let go if the horses were returned to their owners.

    Kishnevi (72bb0b)

  12. In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, to the Dems and the msm if you oppose illegal immigration you are a racist, even if you oppose illegals committing crimes. This also goes for opposing most Dem policies.

    Witness Elizabeth Warren and the new claim that calling her Fauxcahontas is racist.

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/20/huffington-post-reporter-claims-racist-criticize-warren-wont-say-whether-senator-indian/

    The ‘Russian Collusion’ smear is discredited and played out so Plan B is now in effect – be prepared for RACISM wall-to-wall from now till the 2020 election.

    harkin (d17996)

  13. Neither of these criminals would have been here to commit the atrocious crimes for which they were charged, and do the unspeakable damage that they did had our Southern border not been so porous.

    According to the Trump administration’s statistics, 80-90% of illegal crossing attempts between points of entry are stopped.

    That is a rate of crime prevention that I believe is unequalled, and even unapproached, for any other criminal or civil offense.

    Enforcement is not perfect, and never will be. The sheer number of attempts to cross ensures that some will succeed despite the Border Patrol’s best efforts.

    But I think it’s misleading and pushes a false narrative to call it “porous”.

    Dave (1bb933)

  14. Dave,

    The criminal re-entered the country in 2015. Trump became president in 2016.

    Dana (fdf131)

  15. Not sure what your point is Dana. Statistics go back farther than 2016. The interdiction rate has not changed significantly in the last 5 years.

    Dave (1bb933)

  16. I realize that about the statistics, Dave. I thought by how you worded your comment that you were only referring to Trump’s tenure.

    Dana (fdf131)

  17. A great man like Mr. Trump the President creates not only spatial but also temporal resonance. As his influence is felt across the Earth, it is likewise felt in the time stream — past, present, and future.

    nk (dbc370)

  18. I think there’s a branch of physics that actually postulates that gobbledygook. Or is it mathematics? Not Trump, specifically, but future events being felt in the past.

    nk (dbc370)

  19. That’s kind of the point – there are political forces pushing the false narrative that border enforcement is somehow lax, or permissive, or whatever, and it not backed up actual evidence.

    Yes, some people who try to cross illegally get through, but it is a small fraction. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve where it’s feasible, but it completely derails any fact-based discussion when people claim that border enforcement is scandalously lax. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been since the middle of the Bush administration when the number of border patrol agents was doubled (and other resources were increased).

    This report has a nice graph showing how the manpower increased dramatically. Since that time, the number of successful unlawful entries per year between PoEs has fallen by about a factor of 10 (Figure 3 here).

    Dave (1bb933)

  20. nk (dbc370) — 8/20/2019 @ 10:57 pm

    I knew you were going to say that.

    Dave (1bb933)

  21. Also Dave, while 80-90% is certainly to be applauded, the actual hard numbers of successful entries should included if attempting to make your point, because if 1,000 people try to enter and 800 are stopped, that still leaves a large number who succeed in crossing, and in which there could be criminals intent to do as much harm as the individuals in the two stories.

    Further, if you don’t believe it’s because of a porous border (including reasons also mentioned in post: inefficient border security/ lack of efficient wall), then why the heck do you think they were successful in crossing into the US?

    Dana (fdf131)

  22. Looking at Fig. 3, staffing has actually been decreasing on the Southwest border (which we are discussing) since the high point in 2012.

    In the real world, and not on paper, a “small fraction” could be 50 or it could be 500. The actual number matters.

    Dana (fdf131)

  23. Also Dave, while 80-90% is certainly to be applauded, the actual hard numbers of successful entries should included if attempting to make your point, because if 1,000 people try to enter and 800 are stopped, that still leaves a large number who succeed in crossing, and in which there could be criminals intent to do as much harm as the individuals in the two stories.

    No question about that.

    Further, if you don’t believe it’s because of a porous border (including reasons also mentioned in post: inefficient border security/ lack of efficient wall), then why the heck do you think they were successful in crossing into the US?

    If by “porous” you mean “less than perfect”, yes. But it’s always going to be less than perfect (hence “porous”), so we should be quantitative if we want to discuss in terms of anything other than rather meaningless generalities.

    Forgive me if I misinterpreted your lament, but I took porous to mean “porous like a sponge” – full of holes; scandalously permissive. That is a frequently repeated false narrative in certain quarters, and IMO it badly misrepresents the truth of the matter.

    While I’m sure I’m not going to convince anyone, I think generalizing from anecdotal cases to sweeping statements about border enforcement is not a good way to think about the problem, either.

    FWIW, I absolutely agree that deportation of violent criminals should be the highest priority, and I also think that it is beyond stupid that there is no mechanism with the force of law for detaining people held in local custody. As long as the Feds have to rely on voluntary compliance, there are going to be people who walk free when they shouldn’t. THAT is an obviously broken system, and we should push to fix it rather than being shocked every time it breaks in the same, completely foreseeable way.

    Dave (1bb933)

  24. The second time they show up, chop off a hand. The third time, the foot on the opposite side.

    Kevin M (21ca15)

  25. It is porous. It is a crisis.

    DRJ (15874d)

  26. There is also a terror threat on our Southern border.

    DRJ (15874d)

  27. From the first article you linked:

    The Department of Homeland Security claims that about 20% of illegal border crossers make it into the country. Other studies, however, say border agents fail to apprehend as much as 50% of illegal crossers.

    Even at the lower percentage, that means that 104,000 illegals made it into the country in 2018 alone.

    Is that not a crisis at the border?

    I note they do not cite these “other studies,” or what data they are based on.

    According to the CDC, 121,000 people DIE every year from Alzheimer’s Disease. Do we have an Alzheimer’s Disease crisis? 169,000 DIE every year from accidents and unintentional injuries. Is that a crisis because the number is over 100,000?

    104,000 illegals entering a country of 328 million represents 0.03% of the population per year – one illegal immigrant per 3100 residents. Despite what Donald Trump would like you to believe, the vast majority will not go on to victimize the rest of us. The fact that a number (in isolation from the size of the population) sounds large doesn’t make it “a crisis”. Illegals not only enter, some number also leave, and the number in the country declined by over 1.5 million in the decade between 2007 and 2017. This figure shows clearly that crisis was 15-30 years ago, when the number of illegal immigrants in the country more than tripled in a short timespan. The Bush administration responded to it decisively and effectively by dramatically strengthening enforcement.

    Today, it’s one important public policy issue of many, and – anecdotes aside – one we are (or were, until Trump took over) actually doing a pretty good job dealing with. That absolutely doesn’t mean we should stop dealing with it, or that we shouldn’t react to new challenges, but we should approach it from the standpoint that what we were doing for the past decade was working well, because it was.

    To the extent there is a “crisis” I think it has largely been created by the Trump administration’s determination to replace the extremely successful enforcement methods of the last decade with ones geared toward gratifying his followers and cultivating their cynicism and resentment. In effect, he has said “effectiveness isn’t the goal, perceived toughness (by prosecuting every single apprehended crossing, and thereby completely overloading the system’s capacity) is”. That makes perfect sense if your political movement is based on maintaining and reinforcing a crisis mentality.

    IMO those who still have the capacity for independent and critical thought (which obviously includes the very smart people posting here) should resist being swept up in the torrent of emotional BS emanating from the Trump-adjacent media fear-mongers, and instead try to look at the problem objectively.

    Dave (1bb933)

  28. Good morning, Dave. I absolutely meant porous as it is defined.

    Dana (fdf131)

  29. Good morning, Dana!

    Dave (1bb933)

  30. Speaking of manufacturing crisis for political purposes:

    The Trump administration on Wednesday announced plans that could hold undocumented families detained together indefinitely, replacing the agreement that set a 20-day limit for holding children.

    This won’t end well.

    Dave (1bb933)

  31. 31 Speaking of manufacturing crisis for political purposes:

    The Trump administration on Wednesday announced plans that could hold undocumented families detained together indefinitely, replacing the agreement that set a 20-day limit for holding children.

    This won’t end well.

    Dave (1bb933) — 8/21/2019 @ 8:15 am

    Why not?

    They are literally breaking our laws. Even if they claim asylum, we still need a “transitionary” step before they’re allowed to continue.

    We should definitely do all we can to expedite adjudication to minimize the number of days of dentention, but we cannot simple release them to the public since we know that most do not return to hear the final results.

    whembly (fd57f6)

  32. Why not?

    For one, it will be done incompetently, and turn into a PR disaster.

    Also, as I understand it, it essentially tears up an agreement that settled an important court case (the Flores agreement).

    They are literally breaking our laws.

    Most asylum seekers are abusing our laws (by applying when they do not have a valid claim), not breaking them, aren’t they?

    We should definitely do all we can to expedite adjudication to minimize the number of days of dentention, but we cannot simple release them to the public since we know that most do not return to hear the final results.

    There is a lot of evidence to the contrary. The Acting Homeland Security Secretary recently cited a figure of 90% not showing up, without providing any details about where the data came from or what, specifically, it counted.

    Dave (1bb933)

  33. I am not convinced that court “agreements” are or even should be laws… I do not understand the “20 Day Limit” to be a “law”.

    Pres Obama’s DOJ was well known for his use of “lawsuits by friendly entities” and making negotiated consent decrees to bind the government to these agreements to bypass the actual passing of laws (following the Constitution) vs pulling stuff out of “legal” thin air in.

    Just because there is not a law regarding a particular situation, there is no constitution reason for the courts (and DOJ) to become a ‘super’ legislative+executive branch.

    BfC (5517e8)

  34. Goddam it, I’m writing a letter to Trump, asking that he give consideration to appointing Tonya Harding as the new chief of ICE. We need someone as ruthless as she is in that spot, no more pussyfooting around!

    Colonel Haiku (47d8f4)

  35. Aren’t they all criminals?

    If so, doesn’t it come down to prosecutorial discretion? As chief executive, the president (no matter who it happens to be) ultimately determines where, if at all, that discretion is to be utilized. Certainly object to the allocation of government resources, but the executive has the authority to set its own priorities.

    If you want to engage in a conversation about the dangers of unfettered prosecutorial discretion, let me know but not in this forum.

    Advocaat (2526e9)

  36. This is feature rather than a bug–Taking away the ability to govern by “lesser” government officials (such as states–Something like United States of America vs Federal Republic of America):

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/hickenloopers-campaign-serves-as-a-warning-for-governors/596281/

    But I suspect there is something else at work in this apparent eclipse of America’s governors. What if the diminishment of state governors reflects the diminishment of state governments by the federal government (remember… United State of America, not Federal Republic of America)?

    Recently, scholars at the Tax Policy Center made an effort to suss out how much state spending is locked in on the basis of formulas, legal injunctions, and federal mandates, and the results were eye-opening. In 2015, for example, 40 to 86 percent of California’s budget was restricted. The lower-bound estimate reflects the percentage of the state budget belonging to pensions, other postretirement public-employee benefits, debt service, and Medicaid. You get to the staggering upper-bound estimate by adding in K–14 education, which is funded through a formula that passed into law as Proposition 98 in 1988; transfers to local governments; TANF; corrections expenditures; and federal receipts. A closer look suggests that much of what is included in the upper-bound estimate really is mandatory, leaving today’s California lawmakers with very little say over how their state government taxes and spends. In times of significant fiscal duress, a supermajority vote can give California the leeway to provide less funding for K–14 education than the formula calls for, but the law also dictates that these shortfalls be made up for in later years.

    BfC (5517e8)

  37. Thank you, Dave, for the thoguht-provoking comments.

    John B Boddie (11ac33)


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