Halt criminals at border
Illegal immigration must be combated with resolve. We cannot allow the issue to be framed by amnesty advocates as a referendum on Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus,” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, with its famous line, “Give me your tired, your poor ...”
As again evidenced last week with the alleged murder of Mollie Tibbetts at the hands of an undocumented immigrant, there are violent criminals among the many who cross the border. No state is immune from crimes committed by illegal immigrants, certainly not Massachusetts. Yesterday brought news that a man was arrested in Texas and is facing child rape charges in Framingham.
According to the MetroWest Daily News, U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested 48-year-old Octaviano Boche Arevalo last week at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to his native Guatemala. He was charged with raping a boy in Framingham multiple times over a three-year period. According to Customs officials, Arevalo has been living in the U.S. illegally and has been ordered deported five times.
Meanwhile, we have elected officials, including our own Sen. Liz Warren, who want the forces on the border charged with protecting us to be abolished. In fact, Sen. Warren has used harsher rhetoric about ICE and the entire criminal justice system than she has on illegal immigrants involved in criminal activity.
By electing radical progressive politicians on every level, we are failing victims like the boy in Framingham and Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa.
We must demand that our elected representatives oversee the full implementation of the laws regarding illegal immigration. We should hold them accountable at the ballot box if they do not — it is their fundamental duty to protect American citizens, and if they don’t believe that, they are not fit to serve.
Also, we must empower and encourage the fine men and women of law enforcement at every turn. The apprehension of Arevalo was the result of cooperation among many law enforcement branches and they should be lauded for it.