In a Dark Day, Senate Defeats Anti-Sanctuary City Bills

By Joe Guzzardi
July 13, 2016
Noozhawk

Last year, in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Laura Wilkerson read from the autopsy report that chronicled her high school senior son Joshua’s murder.

Illegal alien Hermilo Moralez, a 19-year-old Belize-national and Houston-area resident, tortured, strangled, beat and ultimately doused Joshua’s lifeless body with gasoline before setting him on fire.

Police evidence shows that after the murder, Moralez went to a friend’s house, showered, watched a movie, ate popcorn and drank a Coca-Cola. Wilkerson told the Senate panel that at Moralez’s trial, she saw no traces from him of remorse.

The jury sentenced Moralez to 30 years in jail, but Wilkerson doesn’t expect that after he’s released he’ll be deported despite federal law that mandates his removal.

Toward the end of her testimony, Wilkerson said: “I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to do something about it.”

Wilkerson’s wish is that Congress be angry at the open borders that allow criminals to enter the United States unchecked, and allows sanctuary cities like Houston to protect society’s worst elements.

For Wilkerson and thousands of other illegal aliens’ crime victims, July 6 was a dark day. Senate Democrats blocked two bills, one that would have stripped funding from sanctuary cities, and a second that would impose stricter penalties on repeat immigration offenders.

The first bill, “The Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act” sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., defined a sanctuary city as any state-level jurisdiction that fails to cooperate with federal immigration officers or comply with an Immigration Customs and Enforcement detainer request.

Noncompliance would mean that the jurisdictions could lose federal community and economic development grants. Toomey’s legislation would also protect local law enforcement officers from frivolous lawsuits brought against them for doing their jobs.

The second, “Kate’s Law” sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, proposed a mandatory minimum five-year sentence on repeat, felonious unlawful border crossers.

“Kate’s Law” is named in memory of Kate Steinle, shot and killed last year on Pier 14, a popular tourist venue in sanctuary city San Francisco’s Embarcadero district. Her murderer, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, is a five-timed deported, seven-time convicted felon.

Despite support from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association and the National Association of Police Organizations, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., argued, illogically, ludicrously and insultingly, that Toomey and Cruz’s proposed measures are anti-immigrant.

On his website, Reid wrote that the bills demonize and criminalize immigrant and Latino families.

He deceptively claimed that the bills, if enacted, would undermine local law enforcement’s ability to police their communities and ensure public safety.

But the public wasn't safe in Houston and San Francisco, and isn’t safe in the 300 other sanctuary cities that harbor criminals.

Boiled down, Reid and his fellow Democrats voted to safeguard illegal immigrants, including repeat offenders, and to help them break federal law, even though the numbers of alien-perpetrated criminal offenses against U.S. citizens grows week by week.

During her testimony, Wilkerson implored the Senate panel to recognize that America is at war with illegal immigrants, to acknowledge that the Homeland Security Department has no idea who crosses the border, and to “put Americans first.”

To their shame, Senate Democrats rejected Wilkerson’s pleas and, as they have often done before, put illegal immigrants’ agenda ahead of the Americans they’ve sworn to protect.

— Joe Guzzardi is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) who now lives in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at [email protected].  The opinions expressed are his own.