There weren’t many moments in the 2020 presidential campaign when Joe Biden appeared in public and answered questions on the fly, without any notes to guide him. To the extent Biden did sit for interviews, he only talked with friendly outlets that went out of their way to help him answer their questions. But despite that assistance, sometimes things still went very wrong.
One of the more notable debacles came in January of 2020, when Biden participated in an “election forum” at Vice. Biden was asked how he would change the “culture” at ICE, or Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. His answer involved the usual angry yelling and finger-pointing. But the substance of what Biden said was so bizarre that it left the Vice interviewers speechless. Watch:
Even for Vice, that was a little much. Biden pledged to fire any ICE officer who arrested an illegal immigrant for committing a federal misdemeanor, even though that’s in the job description of ICE officers. Enforcing the law is what they were supposed to be doing, and Biden just publicly threatened to terminate anyone who did that. And Joe Biden declared that drunk driving is a misdemeanor, even though in many cases it’s actually a felony.
It’s an insane series of statements for any presidential candidate to make, but it was especially odd coming from Biden, who claimed for many years that his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver (even though, in typical Joe Biden fashion, the story wasn’t true). Now, completely unprompted, Biden gave the green-light for illegal aliens to drink and drive in the United States without fear of deportation or even arrest. He affirmed the right of non-citizens to drive drunk in the United States.
If you wanted to terrorize as many American citizens as possible, and ensure that thousands more people die in drunk-driving accidents every year, this is exactly the kind of policy you’d adopt. You’d provide incentives for degenerate criminals living in this country to commit even more crimes, by removing any fear in their minds that they might get deported if they disobey.
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Four years ago, it was easy to try and dismiss Biden’s remarks as a gaffe, or a misstatement. At the time, that’s exactly what many on the Left did. But it wasn’t a misstatement at all. It was instead a de facto part of the Democratic Party platform that, indeed, illegal aliens should be able to drive drunk as much as they want, without having to worry about the consequences. That’s the platform Biden ran on. “Let the illegals get drunk and kill your family in fiery car wrecks on the highway!” That was basically the campaign motto. And it’s what most of his party’s delegation in Congress believes in.
That’s why, yesterday, 150 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted “no” on a bill that would allow for the automatic deportation of illegal immigrants who drink and drive, whether it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. The bill also would make it harder for non-citizens convicted of DUI to enter this country in the first place. Again, the overwhelming majority of Democrats tried to block this bill. They have no problem with foreign nationals entering into this country, and then committing a dangerous crime — one that could easily get American citizens killed.
Fortunately, the bill still passed by a 274-150 vote, with 59 Democrats joining the Republicans. But it was far closer than it should have been.
Of course the only real issue with the bill is that we should automatically deport all illegals anyway, sober or not. But since that’s not happening, this seems like a logical place to start — especially with all of the many cases of illegals killing Americans by driving drunk.
That includes the case of Jose Menjivar, who police arrested for killing two American citizens after racking up more than a decade’s worth of probation violations and DUIs. That record didn’t stop Jose from getting in his Toyota Tundra while drunk and doing it all over again last month, according to police. Watch:
What’s not mentioned in that report — because local news stations don’t like to talk about illegal immigration — is that this man has a record of four deportations. He was kicked out of this country in June 2009, June 2013, November 2014 and January 2015. But the border is completely open, so he just kept coming back. And after a while, the federal government just stopped deporting him, even though they had ample opportunity to do so. He was arrested multiple times in this country after his last deportation — in particular for DUIs on Dec. 7, 2016 and May 7, 2019.
None of that mattered to the DOJ, or to the Left-wing judges in Colorado, so here we are. Prosecutors wanted to send him to prison for a year, but the judge — named Zak Malkinson — again released him. And now two people are dead as a result. And here’s the kicker: all he has to do is come up with $10,000 out of his $100,000 bond, and then he can get out, get drunk and kill some more American citizens.
This is the kind of degeneracy that Democrats want in this country. They just voted to make it harder to deport illegal aliens like this accused killer. And there are a lot of killers like him. In 2021, there was the case of Ernesto Lopez Morales, a Guatemalan who was illegally living in Florida. According to police, Ernesto was driving his Suburban with no lights on when he plowed into another vehicle, pushing it 600 feet off the road and killing a 5-year-old girl inside. He then fled the scene.
What happened to Ernesto? He was charged with manslaughter and given a $22,500 bond, which he could post with just a couple of thousand dollars. He wasn’t immediately removed from this country, or even forced to stay behind bars. After a five-year-old was killed.
Then there was the case of the illegal alien who killed NFL linebacker Edwin Jackson and his ride-share driver around 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Jackson became sick, so the driver pulled over to the shoulder of the interstate in Indianapolis —- and both men got out of the car. That’s when another intoxicated Guatemalan national, named Manuel Orrego-Savala, drove his Ford F-150 into the emergency lane and killed Jackson and his driver.
This incident never should have happened, because Manuel shouldn’t have been in the United States in the first place. Manuel had a previous DUI conviction and two deportations — one in 2007 and another in 2009. In other words, he’s exactly the kind of person that those 150 Democrats want to keep in this country.
There are many more examples along these lines. There’s the case of Elifeo Agustin, who had two convictions for driving under the influence, one in September 2019 and the other in January 2020. He got deported because of that latter arrest, but of course, had no problem getting back into this country — where on one Sunday night late last year, he got drunk and nearly killed a man with his Chevy Malibu, according to police.
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And then there’s the reported illegal alien Juan Felix-Avendano, who according to WisconsinNow, was “driving 106 MPH in a 40 MPH zone when he slammed into the back of a vehicle carrying Jan and George Schimming, 76- and 78-years-old, and their son, Craig Schimming, 52,” while the family was on the way to church. Schimming later died.
Just weeks earlier, also in Wisconsin, an illegal alien named Ernest Regalado was accused of killing a 20-year -old nurse in a DUI wreck.
I could spend all day going through the list of illegal aliens who have killed American citizens, and their prior rap sheets. Suffice it to say, the fact we’re not enforcing immigration law — even against DUI offenders — is clearly getting people killed. These are incidents that should fill us with absolute rage and disgust. Of course it is an outrage and a tragedy anytime someone is killed by a drunk driver. But the idea that we are allowing the dregs of humanity from other countries to come here illegally and kill good, productive, law abiding members of our own communities, is just unconscionable.
So what then is the argument for voting against this bill? Here’s Rep Pramila Jayapal of Washington to explain:
.@RepJayapal on her opposition to a bill allowing for the deportation of illegals convicted of DWI: “Stop referring to people as ‘Illegals’” pic.twitter.com/CO65A5tlQl
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 1, 2024
So the last part there is a complete non sequitur. Whether lawmakers have driven drunk is irrelevant because we’re talking about a bill that applies to illegal aliens — people who have already violated the law, who have no legal right to be in this country, and then commit another crime on top of that. So it’s not clear why she’s suggesting that some members of Congress would be affected by this bill in any way, unless she’s admitting something about the immigration status of one of her colleagues (which isn’t that hard to imagine, actually). I will say that if there are any illegal alien congressman, I absolutely am in favor of deporting them immediately. No need to wait for them to drive drunk. So that should solve that problem.
But the crux of Jayapal’s argument is that she doesn’t condone DUI, and she thinks we should do everything we can to prevent people from driving while intoxicated. But at the same time, she opposes the bill because it’s “broad” and it “scapegoats and denigrates immigrants.” Specifically, Jayapal complains that this bill doesn’t focus only on “serious” offenses, and instead would make an immigrant instantly deportable for any DUI offense at all.
Reasonable people see that as a feature, not a bug. The only difference between a “serious” DUI and one that Jayapal doesn’t deem “serious” is that nobody was hurt or killed by the latter. But that’s only a matter of luck. The reason why it’s bad to get behind the wheel when you’re drunk is that you could kill someone, or yourself, even if in most cases it doesn’t end that way. Everyone who commits a DUI is putting lives at risk, whether they actually kill someone or not. And an illegal immigrant should be given zero latitude to put American lives at risk at all, under any circumstance and to any degree.
So these are not exactly strong arguments so far. Let’s keep listening:
.@RepJayapal on her opposition to a bill allowing for the deportation of illegals convicted of DWI: “Stop referring to people as ‘Illegals’” pic.twitter.com/CO65A5tlQl
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 1, 2024
Here Jayapal spends a long time complaining that some states consider it a DUI if you are sitting in a parked car, with key in the ignition, drinking alcohol but not driving. Jayapal apparently considers it absurd to criminalize such behavior, because the most liberal appellate court in the country says so. She also seems to think that the cold temperatures might necessitate someone sitting in the car while they drink a beer. I’m not sure I follow the logic there. How does that excuse work? “Sorry officer, I’m just sitting here chugging this beer in my car with my key in the ignition because… it’s cold outside.”
This is also an interesting argument, because as we saw, Jayapal herself just said that we should do “everything we can to PREVENT people from driving drunk.” But apparently, doing everything we can to prevent people from driving drunk doesn’t include arresting them before they start driving. We have to wait for them to actually start driving the 4,000 pound hunk of metal down the road before we arrest them, according to this logic.
But it seems to me that there couldn’t possibly be any valid reason for a person to sit in the driver’s seat, with the key in the ignition, while inebriated. It’s a very safe assumption that their intention is to drive. We often arrest people for attempting to do things even if they haven’t done it yet. Take attempted murder, for example. If you take overt steps towards killing someone, then you will go to prison for a very long time. By the same token, if you commit overt steps towards drunk driving — like getting drunk and then getting in a car — then you should go to prison. And if you’re an illegal alien, you should be deported.
But really this is a moot point. Because there’s a very simple answer to the question of how much “leeway” should we give illegal immigrants who are already committing a crime just by being in this country. The answer is that they deserve no leeway and no leniency whatsoever, whether they’re driving drunk or not. They should all be deported if they’re in this country, and barred from entering if they’re not.
Right now, though, a lot of Republicans seem to disagree with that. They’re close to agreeing to a border deal with the Biden administration that would still permit thousands of illegals to enter this country every day. Here’s their reasoning:
Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticizes Republicans that don’t want to pass the Senate border deal: “If we have a bill that, on net, significantly decreases illegal immigration, and we sabotage that, that is inconsistent with what we told our voters we would do.” pic.twitter.com/hnsowGTgx3
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 1, 2024
This “compromise position” will still allow 5,000 illegal immigrants to enter this country every day. That’s nearly 2 million illegals every single year. This isn’t a “compromise” at all. It will just encourage more illegal migrants to come here, in the hopes that they’ll be allowed in. It won’t “reduce” illegal migration whatsoever.
But even if it did, a “reduction” isn’t enough at this point. We now have illegal aliens who are so emboldened that they’re attacking police officers, then immediately getting out of jail while flipping the bird to the camera. That just happened the other day in New York, as you might have seen.
Anyone telling you to try the “compromise” position doesn’t want you to realize that we’ve been trying the “compromise” position for several decades now. And with every American citizen who’s killed by an illegal migrant, or beaten in Times Square, it becomes abundantly clear that the time for compromise is over.