Something stinks

When the wind shifts and blows from the south, I can smell something rotten down in Aurora. It’s coming from the police station.

On October 30th Brenetta Beck, a 25-year-old black woman, was found murdered in her apartment, stabbed to death. So, they picked up her 24-year-old boyfriend on Wednesday and released him to Immigration on Friday.

But the police haven’t given this man a name, except to say he is a suspect. He was turned over to Immigration “based on his past criminal record, which could lead to his deportation.” So, ICE took him into custody and probably agreed to hold him so Aurora could buy some time to process evidence. The case isn’t quite there yet to charge him, but they are pretty sure they have their man.

But why aren’t they releasing his name? We have a couple of high-profile cases going in the area of wives disappearing. One is the Lisa Stebic case and the other is Stacey Peterson. In both cases they lack a body but the police and the press have named their spouses as “persons of interest”, which has brought hoards of cameras and microphones to their front yards. Both women were young, white, and attractive.

Here we have a suspect (obviously foreign-born) who is in custody but not named.

Now, Aurora is a Hispanic enclave (46% of the population in 2000). We have no clue as to the nationality of the suspect. He could be from Chad or Cambodia or Columbia or even Canada.

And he could have his papers. We sometimes forget that even those with green cards are subject to deportation if they break serious laws.

So, why all the secrecy about his identity? I certainly hope it isn’t simply a tactic to keep people thinking that illegal aliens are just as safe as everyone else.

That appears to be the MSM view, you know. Here’s a headline from the Sun Times a day before the murder: “Wrongly accused. IMMIGRATION: Think illegals are more likely to be involved in crime? Think again”

I fired off this letter to the editor but it was never published:
Editor – Chicago Sun-Times 29 October 2007
Dear Sir:
I must take issue with your recent article regarding illegal aliens and crime. You were absolutely right to declare, “Reliable statistics on crime by undocumented immigrants are hard to come by.”

The truth is, no one in Illinois knows how many illegal aliens are in the prison system because we don’t identify them. Locally, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that Chicago and Cook County are sanctuary jurisdictions. From the cop on the street to the warden himself, little effort is made to discover residency status and request a detainer hold.

One could scarcely blame them, since our local Immigration office (ICE) is particularly weak in the area of enforcement. A case in point is the Little Village raid last spring. ICE representative Elissa Brown went out of her way to assure residents that they were only looking for those 22 suspects and no other illegal aliens were in danger of arrest.

It is reminiscent of the announcement Brown’s office made in advance of the May 1, 2006 rally that no enforcement activities would be carried out that day; illegal aliens were free to protest with impunity.

The L A Times reported earlier this month, “In Orange County, officials found that about 10% of the 46,000 inmates that have gone through the system since mid-January were illegal immigrants.”

To see the impact of 100% screening at time of booking, one should look at the track record of the Costa Mesa City Jail. Similar to Elgin in size and Hispanic population, they have discovered that 11% of people booked in their jail are deportable illegal aliens.

It would also be wise for you to clarify the research of Dr. Ruben Rumbaut, one of your cited “experts”. His research does not distinguish between illegal aliens and foreign-born prisoners with lawful presence, yet many journalists fall for the data as “proof”.

Additionally, your readers ought to know that Rumbaut’s research on the subject was funded by two groups; The American Immigration Law Foundation and The Immigration Policy Center. One would do well to know the agenda of these organizations before accepting the “data” at face value. (end of unpublished editorial)

I don’t know why they never printed it…