June 23, 2006

Failing You

The Friday Nashville City Paper has details on how the criminal justice system repeatedly put illegal immigrant Gustavo Reyes Garcia back on the streets instead of in jail or on a bus back to Mexico. Now, two Americans are dead because the system - from local law enforcement to state law enforcement to the criminal justice system and even to the highest reaches of the federal government - failed in its primary duty: to safeguard American lives. The City Paper has a good editorial on the Garcia case as well.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen insists immigration is a federal issue, and fought against a proposal to involve the Tennessee Highway Patrol involved in enforcing immigration laws. But here's the bottom line: If someone at any level of government had enforced the immigration laws and removed Gustavo Reyes Garcia from American society, Sean and Donna Wilson of Mt. Juliet, Tennessee would be alive today.

Local law enforcement and the criminal justice system failed the Wilsons. Gov. Bredesen, who has done nothing on illegal immigration except to pass the buck, failed the Wilsons. The federal government failed the Wilsons. And by doing so, they all failed you, too.

And in a final insult to you, they're all going to bend over backward to protect the rights of a killer who has no right to be here in the first place.