Good Riddance

There was a time when the journalists in this country were in touch with the ideals and beliefs of the public. Today, the grandchildren of those journalists use their talents to reveal our war secrets to the enemy, to demonize our soldiers and cops, and destroy our national morale.
 
On the domestic front, the issue that makes the press foam at the mouth is immigration. They are convinced that anyone who believes that the United States has a right to control its borders is some kind of mouth-breathing racist. There is never any consideration by most reporters of the damage that widespread illegal immigration does to America's medical, social, and law enforcement resources.

By the most conservative estimates, there are more than 12 million illegal aliens in this country. All but the most liberal Americans and those who own large industries that benefit from illegal alien labor at ridiculously low wages believe that this is a real problem. A certain portion of society believes the solution to this problem is to give amnesty to these millions of law breakers and make them American citizens. Another portion of the public believes that all of these people should be removed from the country.

The vast majority of the American people hold beliefs somewhere between these two extremes. But even those middle-of-the-road citizens who are most sympathetic to the plight of hard-working, otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens believe that violent criminal aliens should be sent back to their place of origin.

Not so, the fine folks at the Washington Post. In a near vomit-inducing article titled "A Long Flight of No Return," the Post recently detailed the deportation of violent criminals and gang members who had been living in the United States illegally. The 1,300-word article makes no mention of the specific crimes committed by these people.

Instead, it makes them the picture of the tired, hungry "wretched refuse" yearning to breathe free like the poem says on the great lady in New York harbor. Look at the accompanying multimedia presentation shot by the Post's photogs and you'll see who many of these people really are.

I'm no expert. But I can tell you that a man with "MSX3" tattooed on his hand is bad news. MSX3 is easily deciphered as MS-13. Hmmm...where does the hyperviolent Mara Salvatrucha gang have one of its strongest footholds in the United States? The answer, as just about any cop knows, is: Virginia. More specifically the Northern Virginia suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C.

Even the most sympathetic of the deportees profiled by the Post, a 30-something business owner with three kids, was on that 737 back to El Salvador for a very good reason. He has multiple DUI convictions; he broke into his wife's home; and he attacked responding officers, wounding two of them. After he served four years in prison for assault on the police officers, marshals escorted this illegal alien back to El Salvador. And I say good riddance.

Look, I doubt that we can deport everyone who is illegally in the country. It would be a massive undertaking. And once we started the process, a lot of people would get hurt, including American-born children. But can we at least agree that violent felons who have no right to be in America should be shown the door once they serve their terms?

And I know it's too much to ask. But wouldn't it be great if the editors of the Washington Post sent their reporters to interview the victims of the crimes committed by these criminals rather than spending all their time and effort making the bad guys look like they are being oppressed by the "evil" American government?
 
Their journalistic forebears would have seen the crime victims as the real story. After all, they were attacked, maybe even killed, by people who shouldn't have ever been in the country and should never have had the opportunity to injure them. Such irony is a great hook for a story. Unless you're too blinded by anti-American sentiment to see it.