May Day Distress Signals

This year, as ever, campuses nationwide are sponsoring or supporting May Day demonstrations on behalf of immigrants in America who may or may not be here legally. Google the phrase “campus May Day demonstrations” and we will get 32,400,000 entries.

Federal officials charged with enforcing U. S. immigration law, meanwhile, are sending up their own distress signals. “Immigration-related felony cases are swamping federal courts along the Southwest border, forcing judges to handle hundreds more cases than their peers elsewhere,” Jennifer Talhem of the Associated Press reports. “Judges in the five, mostly rural judicial districts on the border carry the heaviest felony caseloads in the nation.”

“Each judge in New Mexico, which ranked first, handled an average of 397 felony cases last year, compared with the national average of 84.” That comes to more than one a day.

The White House response can be summed up in a word—denial. “Homeland security officials say the increased security is working,” Talhelm reports. “In Yuma, President Bush said that the number of people apprehended for crossing the southern border into the United States has declined by nearly 30 percent this year.”

“Court officials, however, say they are in crisis mode trying to deal with the defendants.” Small wonder, in a study of 55,322 illegal aliens that it completed two years ago, the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that each of their subjects averaged out to eight arrests apiece.

The GAO is a research arm of the U. S. Congress. “Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than one offense,” according to Richard Stana, then-director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the GAO. “Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses.”

o “About 45 percent of all offenses were drug or immigration offenses.”

o “About 15 percent were property-related offenses such as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and property damage.

o “About 12 percent were for violent offenses such as murder, robbery, assault, and sex-related crimes.

o “The balance was for such other offenses as traffic violations, including driving under the influence; fraud—including forgery and counterfeiting; weapons violations; and obstruction of justice.

o “Eighty percent of all arrests occurred in three states—California, Texas, and Arizona. Specifically, about 58 percent of all arrests occurred in California, 14 percent in Texas, and 8 percent in Arizona.”

In other news, the film Waitress opened to rave reviews. It is the final credit
of actress-writer-director Adrienne Shelly, who was killed last year by an illegal alien working as an undocumented construction worker.

The 40-year-old Queens native left behind a grieving husband and three-year-old daughter.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.