Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives

   When a 41-year-old mother is murdered at a bus stop, who bothers to protest?

   Stephanie Minter's death is as closely tied to the nation's immigration debate as Alex Pretti's or Renee Good's.

   But while Pretti and Good died while trying to prevent the enforcement of our country's immigration laws, Minter died precisely because those laws were not enforced.

   Abdul Jalloh, the man alleged to have stabbed Minter to death in Fairfax County, Virginia, should never have set foot in America.

   He came here illegally from Sierra Leone in 2012, and since then he's illegally done just about everything else imaginable:

   Jalloh was arrested more than 30 times -- for everything from drug possession and trespassing to assault, malicious wounding and rape -- before he finally turned an innocent woman into a pincushion.

   Yet his victims were often homeless and couldn't be tracked down to be interviewed by police.

   If progressives who otherwise are keen to advocate for the homelesscould make a distinction between vulnerable Americans and predators like Jalloh, he could have been stopped and sent home long before he could kill.

   Yet he was convicted and imprisoned just once -- and only briefly:

   "In Feb. 2023, he stabbed a 73-year-old man so forcefully, the blade broke off the knife," Julie Carey of D.C.-area NBC affiliate News4 reports. "He pleaded guilty to malicious wounding and was sentenced to serve two years with five years of time suspended."

   No wonder Jalloh thought he could kill with impunity.

   A case like his ought to make defenders of illegal immigration and leniency toward repeat offenders rethink their values:

   It's not compassionate to go easy on men like Jalloh -- it's cruel to victims like Minter and the others he preyed upon.

   But progressives only protest when lawbreakers are the "victims," and in their topsy-turvy worldview, it's police who are more dangerous than criminals.

   So no one will take to the streets over Stephanie's slaying -- in politics, her life doesn't matter.

   The politicians progressives have lately put into office promise to make murders like Minter's harder to prevent.

   The freshly elected Democratic governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, made it a priority on day one to revoke an executive order her Republican predecessor had issued that allowed the state's law-enforcement agencies to sign agreements with ICE.

   And last week, giving her party's rebuttal to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, Spanberger demonized immigration law enforcement in lurid terms, saying officers "ripped nursing mothers away from their babies."

   Just a day after Minter was found dead, Spanberger was referring to illegal immigrants like the man who murdered her as "people who aspire to be Americans."

   She wasn't just speaking for herself or the Democrats of the Commonwealth of Virginia -- this was the national party's designated answer to the president.

   It's the party line, and it's being followed rigorously by other recently elected Democrats such as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.

   Sherrill is also doing everything in her power to make it harder to enforce immigration laws -- so much so she's being sued by the Justice Department over an executive order that bans ICE from state facilities that aren't open to the public.

   "New Jersey's refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities results in the release of dangerous criminals from police custody who would otherwise be subject to removal, including illegal aliens convicted of aggravated assault, burglary, and drug and human trafficking, onto the streets," the DOJ warned.

   There's nothing hypothetical about that. There are countless cases like Jalloh's, and there will only be more as states like New Jersey and Virginia pass laws to give sanctuary to people like him.

   Democrats are marketing Spanberger and Sherrill, both of whom won by double-digit margins in their states last year, as the party's face of moderation, but their policies tell a different tale.

   Democrats haven't left the immigration lawlessness of the Biden years behind -- on the contrary, they're more committed to it than ever.

   And it costs lives, including Stephanie Minter's.

   Americans have been taught to regard the presence of people like Jalloh in their communities as normal, while progressives treat ICE as invaders.

   But does the public really want a Jalloh to roam free among us until he kills?

   He can be stopped from coming to our country and stabbing people in the first place.

   And he can be sent back speedily if he does reach our shores -- if we take our immigration laws, and our citizens' lives, seriously.

   Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

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