illegal immigrants

The Rockville Rape News Coverage

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

 

Two young men, ages 17 and 18, were enrolled as freshmen at a public high school in Rockville, Maryland after being detained and then released by federal immigration authorities. Both were in the country illegally. The students forced a 14-year-old girl into a bathroom stall at the school raped her, sodomized her, and forced her to perform oral sex on them  as she cried out for them to stop, according to police reports. Police collected blood and DNA at the scene.

Were you aware of this case? I wasn’t, and I live in the D.C. metro area, which includes Rockville. I wasn’t aware, apparently, because I have personally boycotted Fox News as a regular news source, relying instead on the straighter Fox Business channel and some equally biased sources that don’t prominently employ the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, the Fox and Friends smarms, or encourage sexual harassment of female personnel.

The Washington Post wrote about the case, but relegated the illegal immigration component to afterthought status. Doing this made it a local story only, and the headline, “Two Rockville High students arrested for allegedly raping classmate at school” made it an easily ignored story. I assume high school students are periodically raped; I assume that, as in college, students occasionally falsely claim rape; I assume that it’s a big country, and bad stuff happens. The Post doesn’t mention the illegal immigrant angle until after 224 words. Without that aspect, the story can not be called national by any stretch of the imagination.

The New York Times noted, in a feature about Fox News coverage, that

“[T]here was also considerable time given to topics, like a rape case in Maryland, that viewers would not have heard about if they had turned to CNN or MSNBC. The rape case, which involved an undocumented immigrant and went virtually uncovered on most networks, received almost hourly updates on Fox, and at times was used as proof that Mr. Trump’s calls for tighter borders and a crackdown on immigration were justified.”

That’s a fair assessment of the tone of the Fox  coverage, as I have checked it on YouTube. Of course, one incident doesn’t prove anything: that kind of coverage is why I don’t watch Fox. This story does have a res ipsa loquitur aspect to it, though: if the US enforced its immigration laws sufficiently to stop these two rapists from slipping through the cracks, this 14-year-ol girl would not have been raped, at least by them. The Times also was correct: none of the major news networks covered the story, and it sure wasn’t going to be mentioned where hip millennials get their news, the comedy shows. Ah, but those stories of the poor, oppressed, good illegals are newsworthy, and covered everywhere.

Does that seem like objective, balanced, ethical news coverage to you? Because it isn’t. Continue reading →

“The Good Illegal Immigrant,” Part IV—The Latest Installment In A Series Of Indeterminate Duration. Unfortunately.

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Good.

[Earlier installments of “The Good Illegal Immigrant” are here, here and here.]

Not to creep into General Sheridan’s territory, but there is no such thing as a “good illegal immigrant.” The term is an oxymoron. In illegal immigrant in the United States is breaking the law every day, hour and minute he is here. Breaking the law is not good. Breaking the law every day is especially not good. Good people do not break the law every day.

Clear?

Roberto Beristain is the owner of a popular restaurant in Granger, Indiana called Eddie’s Steak Shed. He came to the United States illegally from Mexico City  in 1998. Somehow he obtained documentation to work in the country, even a Social Security card, and checked in with ICE each year. In 2000. Roberto and his wife, Helen  were visiting Niagara Falls—such an American thing for a couple to do!— and accidentally crossed into Canada. When officials realized he was in the U.S. illegally as he tried to return, Roberto was detained. Released on bail,  he was told he had to voluntarily leave the U.S. within a month. Beristain says he did not leave because Helen was pregnant.

Ah. All should be forgiven then! This is known as “making up your own exception to the law.” Also not good.

When Roberto checked in with  ICE last month, that 2000 episode finally came up. ICE took Beristain into custody because when he failed to deport himself, his voluntary order reverted to a final order of removal. Why did it take more than a decade for Immigration to notice?

Don’t get me started. Continue reading →

You Want Smoking Gun Proof That The Mainstream News Media Is Promoting Illegal Immigration And Intentionally Deceiving The Public To do It? Here It Is!

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Observe. The headline above was the one first published by the Washington Post. Note the absence of the word “Illegal” before “immigrants.” The fact is that immigrants have nothing to fear about using food stamps. The headline is fake news–it’s false. It is literally untrue. (The story does suggest that some legal immigrants may be avoiding food stamps out of ignorance, but no evidence is presented to show it.)

That’s not the only thing wrong with the headline, and the story beneath it. This is more “poor, abused illegal immigrant” propaganda. How terrible it is that people living in this country illegally after breaching our borders and immigration laws have to fear being held accountable for living in this country illegally after breaching our borders and immigration laws! The outrage!

A nation of laws enforces its laws.  Not enforcing them so as to encourage law breaking is the real outrage.

The Washington Post wasn’t troubled by any of that, though. What caused the paper to change the headline was that highlighting the use of taxpayer funds to pay for food stamps to benefit people who have no right to be in the U.S. might, you know, sort of undermine the intended message of the article, which is to create sympathy for illegal immigrants while seeding opposition to the Trump administration.  Can’t have that. So the headline was changed to this… Continue reading →

Boy, I Bet That Cruel, Xenophobic, Trump Administration Will Deport This Poor Kid…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

None of my captions for this photo of Oliver Funes-Machado are in good taste. Pass.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thoroughly sick of the daily media stories about the hardship of illegal immigrant families being “torn apart” when a parenty finally is held accountable for breaching our borders and breaking U.S. laws. Here is a refreshing story about a likely deportation that everyone can get behind.

I hope.

ICE officials in North Carolina confirmed that Oliver Funes-Machado is an illegal immigrant, and I bet the news media makes sure the “illegal” is included when reporting on his case, if they do.  The 18-year old has been charged with cutting off his mother’s head with a butcher knife.

This is unethical, by the way.

Originally from Honduras, Oliver is accused of repeatedly stabbing his 35-year-old mother before beheading her. He then walked outside, holding her head in one hand and the knife in the other, as he waited for Franklin County deputies to arrive. He  called 911 to report the crime, just like a good citizen should .

Well, that’s a mitigation, I guess.

The teen told the 911 dispatcher that he killed his mother “because I felt like it.”

I don’t think Honduras is sending us their best people.

I’m sure he is a Dreamer, but I still think he should be deported.

Why Shouldn’t Baseball Star Jose Abreu Be Deported?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

No,no,no! Not “passport to eating,” EATING A PASSPORT!

There was a trial, still ongoing,  in a Federal court in Miami last week, where sports agent Bartolo Hernandez and baseball trainer Julio Estrada were tried before a jury for alien smuggling and conspiracy. Prosecutors say they operated a ring that took Cuban players from the Castros’ island to other countries where they could established residency and sign lucrative Major League Baseball contracts.  The big surprise in the trial came when star Chicago White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu told a Miami federal jury Wednesday how he ate his fake passport while flying to the U.S. to cover up the fact that he was arriving illegally as a prime participant in the smuggling operation.

Abreu said he ordered a beer on an Air France flight from Haiti to Miami and used it to wash down the section of his passport showing a false name with  his photo. The reason the unique meal was urgent? Money. Abreu was about to  miss an October 2013 deadline that would forfeit the $68 million agreement he had in place withe White Sox.

“If I had not been there on that particular day, the deadline, then the contract would not be executed and would no longer be valid,” Abreu told jurors. “We had to be in Chicago to sign the contract.”

Ah. Then that’s all right, then!

Abreu the was American League Rookie of the Year in 2014. He  testified under a grant of limited immunity, meaning he wouldn’t be prosecuted if he told the truth on the witness stand.  Jurors learned that the slugger got the fake passport in Haiti, where he and his family had escaped to from Cuba by speedboat in August 2013. One of the associates of Hernandez and Estrada—naturally, the smugglers got a cut of Abreu’s contract—obtained the fake passport and booked the Air France flight, telling the ballplayer to destroy the document on the plane. .

He did not tell him to eat it. Continue reading →

“The Good Immigrant” III, or Fake News? The Incredible Sobbing 13-Year Old

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsitiB9HWO0

A 13-Year-Old Girl Sobbed While Recording Her Immigrant Father Get Arrested By ICE Agent  is the headline at Buzzfeed. Wait, teenage girls weeping is news now? Was she the only teen sobbing this week? How is this news, by any standard?

Of course, it’s headline worthy if the objective is to provoke an emotional reaction rather than to inform the public objectively. In fact, nothing about the story is newsworthy, except as pr0-illegal immigration, anti-law enforcement, anti-President Trump propaganda and hate-mongering. Illegal immigrant and scofflaw Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez had dropped his daughter off at a Los Angeles school, and six blocks from the school his car was surrounded by immigration enforcement agents who took him into custody, just as law enforcement takes law-breakers into custody every hour of every day of the week.  Gonzalez had a 2014 deportation order against him issued by an immigration judge, and violated it every day he spent in the U.S., masquerading as a law-abiding citizen, since then.  He also had a 2009 DUI conviction. This wasn’t even a close call.

I’m pretty sure the children of gang members, drug dealers, muggers and serial killers also sob when daddy is taken away, and while I feel sorry for the children,  it doesn’t make me want to let their fathers go free, it doesn’t mean we should change the laws, and it isn’t news. 

ICE said Avelica-Gonzalez is scheduled to be deported to Mexico, where he was supposed to have returned three years ago. This isn’t cruel, this isn’t unfair, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Brenda Avelica, a different daughter from the one heard sobbing on the viral video of her father’s arrest—YES! It really happened! The girl SOBBED! Film at 11!— said that her father has been in the US for 20 years and has four children, two of them adults.

So?

“It’s really hard what we’re going through,” Avelica told reporters. “I never thought we’d actually go through something like this. It’s terrible to feel and see your family being broken apart.”

Let me fix that for her. It’s terrible to finally have the law catch up to you when you are guilty as hell. The James brothers said that, I think. Maybe it was Bonny and Clyde. Or Bernie Maddoff. ICE agents are not the bad guys here. The elected officials, activists, and journalists who want us to think that, however, are. Very bad. Continue reading →

The Good Immigrant II: The Loudmouth “Dreamer”

/ Jack Marshall / 91 Comments

dani-vargas

Ooooh, I bet a lot of people are just going to hate this.

 22-year-old Daniela Vargas decided to participate in a pro-illegal immigrant news conference this week in Jackson, Mississippi. Two weeks before , ICE officials had handcuff her father and brother in the family’s driveway, for they, like her, were Argentines living in the U.S. illegally. Vargas was only 7 years old when she accompanied her father, mother and brother on a three-month visitor’s visa in 2001. The visa ran out, but they stayed in the Palmetto State.

Daniela had been protected as a “Dreamer” (another progressive euphemism designed to not only obscure truth but to make something that is nothing to be proud of sound benign, even cute) when she was 17 in December 2012 and again in November of 2014. She allowed that protection to lapse, and was officially violating the law for the last three months.

Nonetheless she put herself in front of a microphone and TV cameras this week to proclaim her defiance of the law. “Today my father and brother await deportation,while I continue to fight this battle as a dreamer to help contribute to this country which I feel that is very much my country,” she said.

Then, as Vargas drove home,  ICE agents pulled her over,  handcuffed her and took her to join her family as a first step to deportation.

Good.

Are you outraged? Really? This is a key breach of the common sense, “Don’t rub your law-breaking in the authorities’ faces rule.”  I remember my Dad one time, driving me to the airport when I was late for a flight, passing a state trooper who was going over the speed limit himself.  The trooper pulled us over, and was spitting mad. “You had the gall to flaunt speeding right in my face!” he said, barely under control. “That’s an insult to me, and the law. Just cruise by me going ten miles an hour faster as if I was nothing? No respect at all!” he said.  My dad could only say “I’m very sorry, officer. I didn’t intend to be disrespectful, but you are right. It was.” (He got a ticket.)

Vargas was so certain that she was immune from the laws of ” this country which she feels that is very much my country” that she flaunted her illegal status, after shrugging off her obligation to take the required steps to stay here. Like father, like daughter.

In a statement, an ICE spokesman confirmed that immigration officials took Vargas as “an unlawfully present Argentinian citizen,” into custody  “during a targeted immigration enforcement action” after the agency verified that her DACA status had lapsed.

Now the hashtag #freedany is being  spread on social media as an immigrant rights group, United We Dream, are encouraging young  illegal  immigrants  to sign a petition to Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly demanding Vargas’s release. Its introduction says,,

“ICE agents detained 22 year old Dany Vargas just hours after she courageously spoke about her fear of deportation at a press conference…Dany came to the U.S. when she was 7 years old and was a beneficiary of the DACA program. She is a manager at a small store and dreams of becoming a math teacher.

Like many beneficiaries of the DACA program, paying the nearly $500 in fees every two years was hard and her DACA status expired. However, she saved up, got the money together and her renewal application is now in the approval process. But because of this technicality, ICE tracked her down, and put her into the deportation pipeline.”

Please.

“ICE agents detained 22 year old Dany Vargas just hours after she courageously spoke about her fear of deportation at a press conference…”

The proper word is not “courageously.” Stupidly, defiantly, foolishly, disrespectfully, arrogantly—ask that state trooper for the right words. Flaunting the law in the faces of law enforcement is many things, but it is not courageous.

“She is a manager at a small store and dreams of becoming a math teacher.” Continue reading →

Unethical Quote (And Tweet) Of The Month: Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA.)

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

open-borders

“It’s outrageous the administration is saying anyone who might have committed a crime qualifies for deportations.”

—-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), on Twitter, in response to the recent Trump Administration immigration order.

I know it’s Twitter,  but Senator Harris had 41 unused characters left, so we have to assume that she means this. And if she means this, she is unqualified to be an elected official representing the American public. In fact, she’s a fool.

It is not and cannot be “outrageous” to say that any illegal immigrant, criminal or not, qualifies for deportation. To maintain otherwise is to say that the United States cannot enforce its immigration laws, and not only that, it is “outrageous” to enforce the laws. Is that the position of the Democratic Party? Clarification is essential here. Is it? If so, by what set of values and principles do Democrats make this argument? Does the “it’s outrageous to enforce the law” principle apply to other laws? Presumably it does, or the party has no integrity or legitimate governing philosophy at all.

Why is enforcing the immigration laws against—The Horror!–only the portion of the law-breakers who have no right to be here who have additionally become involved with the violation of other criminal laws so “outrageous”? Does the Senator have some rationale for that contention, or is she just grandstanding? That is, lying.

Or does she accept the reasoning of Jorge Ramos, the openly partisan, pro-illegal immigration Univision anchor, who said at a the network’s annual entertainment awards show (Aside: Why would anyone watch an awards show today, as they have devolved into political rant sessions from one narrow perspective, largely by smugly ignorant hyperpartisans who deserve a nationwide platform no than the average ranting activist holding a placard?), as he erased any distinction between legal and illegal immigration, Continue reading →

Unethical Protest, Unethical Protesters, Just Desserts

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

protest-immigrant

Last week’s “A Day Without Immigrants” protest could be the example in the dictionary to illustrate “unethical protest,” or perhaps “stupid protest.”  The stunt of immigrants not coming to work to protest policies aimed at illegal immigrants and terrorists was a non sequitur, proving nothing, saying nothing. Nobody wants to stop immigration, nobody has an objection to legal immigrants, and the danger of the U.S. not having sufficient legal immigrants is precisely none. According to the Ethics Alarms Protest Check List, “A Day Without Immigrants”  was an epic, embarrassing, dud. If my immigrant employees used this jaw-droppingly dumb protest  to justify not coming to work, I would do exactly what Bradley Coatings, Incorporated  in Nolensville, Tennessee did.

I’d fire them all. Continue reading →

When The Electoral College Makes It Official Today, Remember What Really Made It Possible For Donald Trump To Be President—And It Wasn’t Racism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, Fake News Or Putin

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcrbDYe4qL4

Today, when the electors meet and officially cast the votes that make Donald Trump the next President of the United States, Ethics Alarms will retire the “This will help make Donald Trump President” tag. I was going to wade through the many posts bearing that tag, but the task was too arduous and  depressing, and besides, new examples pop up every day. Trump does not have the skills, experience, reliability, judgment or temperament to be trusted to serve the role that those who voted for him designated him to serve, but the reasons much of the nation desperately, fervently, urgently wanted someone to fulfill that role and now, should be evident to anyone who is not part of the problem.

Two examples suffice.

1. Illegal immigration. Thanks to Trump’s slovenly rhetoric, Democrats, illegal immigration advocates and the news media managed to turn what should have been a substantive debate over the U.S.’s enabling of illegal border-crossing into the false narrative that Trump was racist, xenophobic, and had called all Mexicans “rapists and murders.” (He never did that.) Then Trump himself allowed the debate to focus on his absurd impossible measures to address the crisis: a Berlin-style wall that he would “make Mexico pay for” and mass deportations of 11 million U.S. residents or more. These deflections didn’t change the facts, however: Eight years of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge Democratic and Republican policies of allowing a constant stream of law-breaking foreign citizens over our borders, bolstered by the Orwellian deception by journalists, elected officials and activists of calling them “immigrants” to make dissent from these policies vulnerable to attack as “racist,” had justly infuriated many Americans. After watching so many politicians pretend to oppose the flood across our borders and back down or descend into double-talking gibberish, it was refreshing and—yes, Mrs. Obama–hope-inspiring to hear someone, anyone, call the crisis what it was and pledge to address it, even in crude  terms.

Illegal immigration, and the flaccid, dishonest handling of it by both parties is the issue that made Donald Trump’s rise possible, and all of the conditions that created public indignation and anger over the issue still exist.

1,574  illegal aliens were apprehended at the U.S. Mexico border per-day during the month of November, marking the fifth straight month of escalating illegal immigration into the southwest United States. Nobody knows how many weren’t apprehended, but it is probably more. In addition to the tens of thousands of illegals streaming in from Central America, officials are reporting increased numbers of Cubans and Haitians crossing into the United States from Mexico. No, they aren’t all rapists and murderers or even criminals, and they aren’t all Mexicans, but they all came here or tried to come here illegally. That makes them wrong and undesirable, and all the linguistic tricks being employed to make that simple statement difficult to express won’t alter that central fact.

This month, the Center for Immigration Studies  reported that illegal immigrants with criminal records in this country probably total at least 820,000, with most having felony and serious misdemeanor convictions. Other estimates, naturally the ones cited by Trump,  have suggested up to two million criminal illegal immigrants, but 820,000 is still a number larger than the populations of four Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont or Wyoming. Continue reading →