[VDragnet.com note: The story you are about to read is…sort of true. But heavily fictionalized. And only "one man" has had his name changed to protect the innocent.]
(I've been reading a bit too much of The Mogambo Guru archives on 321gold.com lately and offer this fictionalized Richard Daughty-esque rant in homage.)
Behind the scenes at the VDARE.COM virtual headquarters, I chain-smoke my way through the afternoon watching Humphrey Bogart end up murdered in a ditch by Mexican banditos for the umpteenth time in a Treasure of the Sierra Madre rerun on the VDARE.COM employee lounge's crappy black-and-white TV.
Wondering why he hasn't seen or heard from me in a week, the Capo di Tutti Capi himself, Peter Brimelow, discovers me in my sloth, and suggests a story idea. He tells me that energetic VDARE.COM reader Roger Chaillet—winner of the hard-fought 2003 War Against Christmas Competition – just sent him an e-mail about a British pederast actually agreeing to be deported during the course of removal proceedings in EOIR Immigration Court.
Figuring that none of the other VDARE.COM staffers could care less about ever again hearing anything about the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review – the dreaded EOIR – much less even bother reading my weekly (ever-increasing in conspiratorial ferocity and outright shrillness) rants on the subject . . . not to mention reading and forwarding my Absolutely Definitive Essay to all the charlatans, crooks and phonies serving in lieu of their elected representatives (unless they happen to live in the sixth Congressional district of Colorado, of course)…Brimelow passed the EOIR-related e-mail along to me.
But this is not about how Congress just keeps going on with the same old ridiculous psychotic bloated-government formal hearing procedure to deport every single illegal alien and criminal alien resident in the United States with their own private hearing in front of a Department of Justice lawyer in a robe. . . expecting that illegal immigration and the massive foreign crime wave on our shores will be "solved" by sending every single removal order generated by this worthless system to an automatic appeal before another set of bureaucrats at the EOIR's Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in Falls Church, Virginia, and then on to yet another automatic appellate review before the Circuit Courts of Appeal all over the country, and then back and forth among the tree-sloth-infested Byzantine taxpayer-money-squandering courts over and over again until the alien finally somehow adjusts status in the United States and winds up with a "green card" anyhow.
No, it's certainly not!
Chaillet forwarded this story with a typically acerbic comment about immigrants "doing the jobs that Americans won't do":
"A Richardson [Texas] resident who has been highly regarded for decades as a pioneer in North Texas youth soccer dropped his efforts to fight deportation Wednesday and agreed to return to his native England.
"U.S. immigration officials sought the deportation of Ron Griffith because of a 1981 conviction for fondling a 14-year-old boy he met through the sport. Mr. Griffith, 64, had no record of any other crimes, but officials for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas stressed that removing convicted sex offenders from the country is one of their top priorities." ["North Texas soccer pioneer ends deportation fight," By Frank Trejo, The Dallas Morning News, January 11, 2006.]
As the screen flickered with the closing credits to Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Brimelow pokes me with his walking staff and mumbles something in an incomprehensible British accent. [Vdare.com: Incomprehensible, yes, but Linda Chavez said it was "charming."] I manage to comprehend that Brimelow said something to me to the effect, "doesn't this strike you as an odd case - lot of energy expended on someone who doesn't appear to have committed any recent crime?"
I rise to my feet, finally unsticking myself from the beer and cigarette-stained faux-leather couch in the employee lounge for the first time in several hours, exclaiming, "Odd, you say? . . . Definitely not! There's nothing odd here!"
I begin my Immigration Act-sprinkled diatribe in reply:
"This pederast committed an aggravated felony and is S.O.L. under immigration law. As a sex criminal, he's really been deportable since the 1996 Immigration Act changes were made, so he's had ten years of free stay in the United States due to the INS/DHS/ICE incompetence by not getting rid of him earlier. So enough is enough. Good riddance to bad rubbish! Hurrah for our side!!"
Seeing my thinly-veiled outrage and noticing that I did not bother to make a proper reference to Immigration Act Section 101(a)(43)(A) or explain the aggravated felony sexual abuse of a minor provisions, a well-dressed man from Texas appears out of nowhere in the haze of the smoke-filled employee lounge and immediately sets me straight.
The Dallas News explained the impromptu gathering:
"Paul Hunker, chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, has noted that prior to 1996 non-citizens who committed certain crimes five years after obtaining their permanent resident status were not deportable. However, the law changed in 1996 and the government increased efforts to find and deport immigrants who have criminal records, especially those involving sex crimes.
"'Sexual crimes are particularly heinous crimes, and ICE zealously seeks the removal of persons convicted of such crimes,'" Mr. Hunker said. ["Soccer pioneer can't shake past," by Gosia Wozniacka and Frank Trejo, The Dallas Morning News, December 12, 2005]
But Brimelow isn't buying it. And though Hunker is too nice of a guy to complain about the rough treatment by filing a report with DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, Brimelow immediately has the government interloper summarily escorted from VDARE.COM virtual headquarters by a burly rent-a-cop.
As Hunker was trying to explain, Brimelow's criminal former countryman was not technically convicted of a "crime involving moral turpitude" within five years of entry at the time of the crime. So the guy wasn't removable until the 1996 Immigration Act amendments came along to create a new ground of sexual abuse deportability.
Nevertheless, Brimelow could care less about pussyfooting around with the Immigration Act. He lets me know about it in no uncertain terms straightaway.
In measured tones of technically perfect but (this time) mildly comprehensible Queen's English, Brimelow retorts about Griffith:
"Yeah, but why him? Is he the most serious threat around? Aren't they always whining about insufficient resources?"
"Plus, what happens if he just goes AWOL now? Moves to another city? How long would it take them to find him?"
Desperately trying to maintain decorum, while realizing that Brimelow could have me bounced out of here in the blink of an eye to land on the very same debris-littered sidewalk next to Hunker—who has now had time to think about today's events further and decides that he's going to call the "Intelligence Report" gang at the SPLC about this one and process the proper forms to have VDARE.COM placed on Secretary Chertoff's permanent short list of eavesdropping targets after all—I muster up as many brain cells as I can find after hours of nursing Coronas in front of the tube, and give my foreign-born boss a good dose of native-born American reality.
"Why him?" I shriek. "Because he molested a boy and went to prison for 5 years, that's why! What more of a threat can there be?"
"And yes, as long as Griffith remains out on an immigration bond during the never-ending EOIR hearing process, no matter what he says in court, this sex pervert can still disappear into the United States, move to another city, and get lost in the system like thousands of immigration fugitives before him.
"But if he complies with the order of removal, so be it. We already know that the DHS/ICE can only deport certain illegal aliens and criminal aliens, but unfortunately not all of them. It's a little bit far fetched to shed tears for this guy."
Sensing I've been too hard on the good-natured Brimelow, I end my soliloquy with this magnanimous offer: "Maybe we can trade this Griffith guy for Sir Mark Thatcher?"
Wondering why he hasn't revoked my VDARE.COM card key to the virtual headquarters long ago, and coming to the realization that I've had a bit too many Coronas for my own good this afternoon, Brimelow replies, ignoring my olive branch of an offer completely:
"He didn't go to prison. He was just given probation for five years. Plus no further offenses. Isn't that a difference? And this looks like ex post facto law.
He probably had no idea the law had been changed so long after his original offense. He was picked up quite openly passing through an airport security check.
"Of course, from a traditional point of view, any sexual deviancy is heinous. But that's not how the law or public policy currently treats it in other areas.
"What interests me is DHS's priorities. I wonder if: (1) they enforce the law where it's easy to enforce - this fellow showed up for his hearing - how many Mexicans would?; (2) they go for cases that get publicity, like deporting Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf; (3) if they aren't deliberately sabotaging the deportation process by creating sob stories.
"In contrast, deporting dangerous criminals is difficult, unglamorous and, well, dangerous.
"For that matter, what happened to that illegal alien family with the student kid that Tancredo raised a ruckus about a couple of years ago? Was ANY effort made to deport them?"
As I pick up my jaw off of the floor in shock, I actively suppress my brain from telling my mouth to scream: "GIVE IT A REST, PETER! . . . DEPORTING BRITISH PEDERAST PERVERTS IS A GOOD THING!"
Instead I calmly focus all of my legal eagle skills and explain the legal situation here one more time.
"My dear Mr. Brimelow, the Treason Lobby's minions in the media fall all over themselves to crank-out stories saying 'Isn't it terrible that this poor alien is being deported,' and the new flavor recently: "Isn't it terrible that the EOIR Immigration Judge said mean and nasty things and [shockingly] did NOT grant asylum to this particular alien!'"
"So by devoting your interest and your formidable brain-power to this story [note how I weave in compliments for the boss there] it seems that you are falling into the trap of creating a new politically incorrect (right-wing?) variation on the "sob story" theme, namely, 'Gee, isn't it a shame that Zundel, Rudolf, and the U.K. fondler got deported.'"
"Frankly, things are so ridiculous with immigration law enforcement in 2006 America, that I ABSOLUTELY CHEER when ANYONE actually gets deported.
"Yes, anyone! Us VDARE.COM folks should be cheering too! I know Joe 'Joaquin' Guzzardi would be cheering for sure. Personally, I have no tears for foreign cheaters, liars and criminals complaining that they are getting kicked out of the U.S.
"Although Zundel's botched adjustment of status is a curious scenario - probably only because no one will give a straight answer on whether his attorney messed up in not filing some Circuit Court appeal, or some other inconvenient detail that would change the entire situation from sympathy to bungling.
"But the fact that the DHS/ICE finally caught up to a convicted sex offender is nothing out of the ordinary. Hopefully they will start deporting more aliens soon, maybe? So resisting the temptation to be shocked when they actually manage to get rid of someone – anyone! – will be crucial for our side. Deportation SHOULD be the rule here, not the exception!
"Yes, DHS/ICE is most certainly targeting these aliens with their already limited investigative resources because it definitely means more bang for their buck with the press. But under the Juan Plan, abolishing the ponderous EOIR and federal court litigation approach to deportation, tax dollars would go further toward actually getting rid of criminals in a timely manner, rather than 20 years after the fact . . . if at all.
"DHS/ICE has told the world that they are bearing down and going after previously convicted sex perpetrators on the street, locking them up, and putting them through the EOIR system, such as it is.
"Sometimes it doesn't always work out the first time, as we've seen from the Barrios-Castilla saga. But that's what newly-crowned Assistant Secretary Julie Myers and her minions at ICE are doing anyway. They've made it clear by sending out as many press releases on Operation Predator whenever they get the chance.
"But because of our government's general non-enforcement attitude though, immigration anarchy and generalized scofflaw chaos prevails.
"And you're absolutely right, Mr. Brimelow, nothing ever happened to Jesus Apodaca, the famous young Mexican illegal alien 'student' in Colorado."
Realizing that it was a mistake to have woken me up from my afternoon pre-siesta stupor in the first place, while also coming to the conclusion that he's probably not going to get any work out of me today anyway, Brimelow harrumphs and leaves the employee lounge.
[Peter Brimelow comments: Actually, I was satisfied. As I suspected, this is a case of the immigration bureaucracy looking for what Tom Wolfe called "The Great White Defendant," trying to deport someone other than a minority. The Griffith deportation means nothing good about U.S. immigration law enforcement – except maybe that the bureaucracy is scared.]
Juan Mann [email him] is an attorney and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com. He writes a weekly column for VDARE.com and contributes to Michelle Malkin's Immigration BLOG.
