Preventable Murders Mount; Obama Looks the Other Way at Illegal Immigrant Perpetrators

By Joe Guzzardi
April 1, 2016
 
Because they’re horrific and preventable, every crime an illegal immigrants commits is painful, especially to the families, but also for Americans who have lobbied for decades to secure the Southwest border.
 
Some crimes, however, are more shocking than others. The details surrounding Jose Alejandro Najarro’s brutal aggravated sexual assault last November of a 12-year-old that resulted in her pregnancy are nearly unbearable to report on.
 
According to KVAN TV, Najarro asked the child to come to his Kyle, Texas house on the pretense of having her fix his television. Then, Najarro sat her on his bed, tried to kiss her, and encouraged her to touch him before he forcibly raped her. Najarro offered the child, now five months pregnant, money to return for more sex, but she refused.
 
Sadly, Texas is a haven for illegal immigrant criminals. Last year, Jorge Luis Mejia was arrested for the murder of a 58-year-old woman; in January, authorities charged Francisco Rios-Covarrubias with kidnapping, sexual conduct with a minor, felony child abuse, and sex trafficking. Rios-Covarrubias is in the United States because, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was granted deferred action for childhood arrivals, a program President Obama initiated in 2012.
 
Despite the ease of entry for criminals through the border and the often fatal consequences of non-enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security announced in February that it would reduce Southwestern aerial surveillance to 50 percent less coverage than in previous years. As a direct result of reduced border enforcement, Central American and Cuban families’ illegal entry has increased 38 percent since the spring 2014 surge, according to data DHS collected.
 
Coincidentally, 2016 marks the tenth anniversary of another hideous murder facilitated by a flawed immigration policy that also has a Texas connection. In 2006, a North Dakota federal court convicted Alfonso Rodriquez of felony kidnapping and killing 22-year old college student, Dru Sjodin. Rodriguez, now appealing his death sentence, had a long criminal record of assaulting women. He had pleaded guilty in 1974 to separate counts of aggravated rape and aggravated attempted rape. Then in 1980, Rodriguez stabbed a woman who survived, and received a 23-year sentence. Months after his release, Rodriguez killed Sjodin.
 
The immigration angle: Rodriquez, one of five children born in Texas to migrant farm workers, is an American citizen under the controversial 14th Amendment interpretation that some claim grants automatic citizenship to everyone born on U.S. soil. Critics of automatic citizenship insist that the Constitution excludes children born to parents who are not “under the jurisdiction” of the U.S., which guest agricultural workers are not. Had Rodriguez been properly been classified as a foreign national, he would have been deportable after his first offense, and his future victims, including Sjodin would have been spared.
 
The Obama administration’s dismissiveness toward the threat criminal aliens represent is indefensible. Advocating amnesty, as Obama has done since his inauguration, is one thing: reasonable people can disagree. But encouraging illegal immigration despite its risks is an altogether different and unacceptable option.
 
And releasing criminal aliens who then proceed to be charged with murder after they’re freed is incomprehensible. According to a report Immigration and Customs Enforcement submitted in response to a congressional request, since 2010 more than 120 criminal aliens released, some multiple times, subsequently faced 135 homicide murder charges.
 
The president won’t secure the border, won’t deport criminals and won’t take simple steps to protect citizens. The only conclusion is that the Obama administration is indifferent to American’s well-being.
 

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at [email protected]