Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is a smart and well-trained lawyer. One of his best skills is answering a question in a way that sounds reasonable, but if you are familiar with the legalism he is using, the answer would actually be shocking.
The murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly by an illegal immigrant released into the country by President Joe Biden, gave Mayorkas a prime opportunity to exhibit his talents.
On Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan noted that the suspect not only was “an undocumented Venezuelan migrant” but also was arrested twice, once in New York City for driving without a license and once in Athens, Georgia, for shoplifting. Brennan asked Mayorkas, “Did those states and their law enforcement communicate to the federal government that this had happened? Should this man have been deported?”
Instead of accepting responsibility for allowing the suspect to walk free, Mayorkas tried to blame New York City and Athens. “Margaret, there are a number of cities around the country that have varying degrees of cooperation with the immigration authorities,” Mayorkas said. “We firmly believe that if a city is aware of an individual who poses a threat to public safety, then we would request that they provide us with that information so that we can ensure that that individual is detained if the facts so warrant.”
Mayorkas makes it sound like if only New York City and Athens had alerted Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the suspect’s previous arrests, then ICE would have acted.
But that is not true. Under a Mayorkas memo issued on Sept. 30, 2021, ICE never would have wasted the effort to deport the suspect.
“A noncitizen who poses a current threat to public safety, typically because of serious criminal conduct, is a priority for apprehension and removal,” the Mayorkas memo reads. “Whether a noncitizen poses a current threat to public safety is not to be determined according to bright lines or categories. It instead requires an assessment of the individual and the totality of the facts and circumstances.”
The “aggravating factors” that make an alien a “threat to public safety” include the gravity of the offense and the sentence imposed, the nature and degree of harm, the sophistication of the crime, the use or threatened use of a firearm, or a serious prior criminal record.
The man accused of killing Riley fit none of these factors. There was no sentence imposed for either crime. Most Democrats don’t prosecute citizens for shoplifting because they don’t see the harm it causes. Driving without a license is not sophisticated, and no firearm was used in either offense.
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Even wife-beaters are not necessarily deportable under the Mayorkas regime. “A categorical determination that a domestic violence offense compels apprehension and removal could make victims of domestic violence more reluctant to report the offense conduct. The specific facts of a case should be determinative.” Drunk driving is also not sufficient to make an alien a threat to public safety under Biden.
The reality is that there are thousands of immigrants who have been arrested for crimes such as theft and driving without a license, and Biden is doing absolutely nothing to remove them from the country. Instead, he is doing everything in his power to make it easier for migrants to enter the country and stay as long as they want … at least until they murder someone.