WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T ENFORCE THE IMMIGRATION LAWS. Laws are irrelevant if they're not enforced.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T ENFORCE THE IMMIGRATION LAWS

One of the most horrifying crimes within memory occurred in Washington, D.C. on May 13 and 14. A man named Darron Wint broke into a home, commonly described as a mansion, owned by a businessman named Savvas Savopoulos. Wint held Savopoulos, his wife Amy, their 10-year-old son Philip, and their housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa, captive for around 20 hours while he tormented them and arranged for a futile ransom to be paid, apparently with the aid of one or more accomplices. 

Savvas and Amy Savopoulos

Wint made off with a lousy $40,000, but first he murdered the occupants of the Savopoulos home. He beat Mr. Savopoulos to death with a baseball bat while he was tied to a chair. He slashed Mrs. Savopoulos to death with a knife or other sharp object while she was similarly restrained. The ten-year-old boy reportedly was tortured, then burned alive. Details of Ms. Figueroa’s death have not been released, mercifully. She was alive, barely, when police finally arrived, but expired soon after. Having murdered the family, Wint set the house on fire and fled. He was arrested a few days later, linked to the crime by DNA on the remains of a pizza that he ordered while holding the family prisoner, within a few blocks of Vice President Joe Biden’s residence.

Darron Wint

Needless to say, Darron Wint will never receive the punishment he deserves. But here’s the point: he never should have been in this country in the first place. He immigrated from Guyana in 2000, at age 20. His arrival here was legal, apparently because he was related to others from Guyana who were already in the U.S. So he was a “legal permanent resident.” But a permanent resident doesn’t get to stay forever; that designation merely means that there is no legal end point to the person’s stay at the time when he arrives.

It has been obvious for a long time that Darron Wint is a horrible person who should have been expelled from the U.S. long ago. Mark Krikorian explains:

[T]he relevant question here is why this depraved monster was allowed to remain in the United States?

It’s been obvious for a decade that Wint was an undesirable alien who should have been sent back. “Wint has had more than 30 brushes with the law, including serious charges starting in 2005 as well as minor charges,” according to a news report. He had two restraining orders filed against him, in 2005 and 2006, for threats of violence against others, including his father, stepmother, and younger sister. Since then he’s had several assault convictions, plus multiple arrests for beating his girlfriend, stabbing a man, assaulting a woman at a nightclub, burglary, theft, vandalism, and showing up at his workplace with a machete and a BB gun. He should have been escorted back to Guyana years ago, long before he capped off his life of crime with mass murder.

This man was a guest in the United States. He had no right to remain here. So, why did he?

A green-card holder is formally known as a “legal permanent resident” or LPR, but the “permanent” part just means his permission to stay here isn’t time-limited – as a foreigner, he can still be sent home at any time. After years of frustration with executive laxity and immigration-lawyer obstruction, Congress pushed back in 1996, requiring deportation of LPRs for a wider variety of crimes. But the effectiveness of such measures depends on an executive that is committed to immigration enforcement.

The Obama administration has refused to consider even illegal aliens for deportation until blood has been shed, let alone legal ones. The Washington Times report notes that only about 3 percent of ICE detainer requests in recent years have been for LPRs.

So, in essence, if you came here legally, under our irrational chain immigration regime, there is zero chance that you will ever be kicked out, no matter what you do. Now that Wint has committed a mass murder, ICE–Immigration and Customs Enforcement–has flagged him for deportation once he finishes serving his sentence. Which is to say, never. As Krikorian says, “to call it a day late and a dollar short is a ghoulish understatement.”

Non-enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws didn’t begin with the Obama administration. Wint should have been sent back to Guyana before Obama was even inaugurated. But under President Obama, non-enforcement has become, for the first time, an expressly articulated policy. Barack Obama considers it a great thing–a moral imperative!–that people like Darron Wint are not only welcomed into the United States, but left free to prey on our citizens forever, even after dozens of brushes with the law. Only upon commission of mass murder is any question raised about whether it is really a good idea for us to allow them to stay here–and then, only in the alternative media. 

Our immigration laws have been irrational since the 1960s, when Ted Kennedy and the Democrats remade them. The law is badly in need of drastic reform. But infinitely worse than enforcing bad immigration laws–the laws that allowed Darron Wint to come here in the first place, even though he was a worthless bum, at best–is not enforcing them. Which is the policy of the Obama administration. Barack Obama will never admit responsibility for the murder of the Savopoulos family, but on any reasonable accounting, he has blood on his hands.

Immigration will be the number one issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, assuming that at least one candidate is willing to talk about it.