Dark Day: Senate Defeats Anti-Sanctuary City Bills

By Joe Guzzardi
July 7, 2016
 
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 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 coke. Wilkerson told the Senate panel that at Moralez‘ trial, she saw no traces of remorse from him. 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 allow 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, Senator Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) “The Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act” 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. Non-compliance 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, Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) “Kate’s Law” 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. Steinle’s 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, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) argued, illogically, ludicrously and insultingly, that Toomey and Cruz’s proposed legislation is anti-immigrant. On his website, Reid wrote that the bills demonize and criminalize immigrant and Latino families. Reid 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, 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 American 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 Department of Homeland Security 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, and put illegal immigrants’ agenda ahead of the Americans they’ve sworn to protect.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @joeguzzardi19.