Bring back the Stop Illegal Reentry Act now
Hudson Crozier
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America’s historic border crisis shows no signs of stopping with President Joe Biden’s current approach. Border agents encountered more than 200,000 people trying to cross the border illegally last month, and the rate of “got-aways,” those who make it into the country while evading capture, is increasing.
While border security has sadly become a partisan issue, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a proposal that should be one of the least controversial. The lawmaker wants to reintroduce the Stop Illegal Reentry Act, a bill he originally brought forward in 2015 that would impose a mandatory five-year prison sentence for anyone who enters the country illegally more than once.
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The bill earned the nickname “Kate’s Law” based on the story of a woman who was fatally shot by Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, an illegal immigrant with a criminal record who had been deported multiple times. A jury acquitted the man after he claimed that he didn’t mean to fire the gun. But we no longer need Garcia-Zarate as a poster child for why Cruz’s bill is necessary.
In April, a Mexican national named Francisco Oropesa killed five, including a 9-year-old and a teenager, in Cleveland, Texas. Oropesa’s neighbors had asked him to stop shooting his rifle in his yard. He responded by invading their home and shooting the victims from the neck up in what a sheriff called an “execution-style” massacre, leaving three other children bathed in blood. Even with more than 250 state and federal law enforcement personnel on the case, it took from April 28 to May 2 to catch Oropesa.
Oropesa was convicted of driving while intoxicated in another Texas county in 2012 and had been deported four times. After the shooting, authorities found a shrine in his bedroom dedicated to a Mexican “death cult.”
Contrary to liberal narratives, not everyone who enters the country illegally is an otherwise-good person who is “just looking for a better life.” In fact, criminality among the illegal immigrant population is thought to be underreported. Out of the people who officials managed to catch at the border in fiscal 2023, more were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list than ever in United States history.
Those who break our laws multiple times regarding immigration cannot be trusted to respect other laws once they’re here, and treating them with kid gloves puts people in danger. Cruz has introduced the Stop Illegal Reentry Act in every congressional term since he first drafted it, and he should keep doing so. Blocking it or letting it die will become less and less defensible as the crisis worsens. If that’s the way Democrats want it, they should be forced to own up to their irrational position for everyone to see.
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Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.