Return To Sender

It's good to see that the federal government finally did what needed to be done in deporting Elvira Arellano back to Mexico. She was in the US illegally, and had been claiming sanctuary in a church where she was organizing illegal alien protests. She was arrested upon her emerging from the church. Her deportation took place swiftly and she was sent to Tijuana.

An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son has been deported to Mexico, the church’s pastor said.

Elvira Arellano became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her religious sanctuary. She held a news conference last week to announce that she would finally leave the church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers for change.

She had just spoken at rally Los Angeles rally when she was arrested Sunday outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church and deported, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, where Arellano had been living.

“She has been deported. She is free and in Tijuana,” said Coleman, who said he spoke to her on the phone. “She is in good spirits. She is ready to continue the struggle against the separation of families from the other side of the border.”

It is a travesty that it took this long for Arellano to be deported. The immigration courts had signed off on her deportation in 1997. Don Surber says good riddance. Too bad it took so long for immigration officials to finally do what they were sworn to do - uphold the law.

There's good reason to question the timing of this high profile deportation. What's also important to note is that immigration system can work quite efficiently when it wants to and many illegal aliens have absolutely no intention of assimilating into US culture, but rather want to continue with their own cultures, without regard for US culture, norms, or law.

Meanwhile, the final thug implicated in the heinous Newark execution slaying of three college students was arrested without incident. The survivor of the incident has fingered Melvin Jovell as the shooter who murdered her three friends. New Jersey law enforcement is still trying to sort out the excuses and reasons for why Godinez or Carranza were allowed to roam on the streets, including the overburdened criminal justice system and corrections system, especially when both were illegal aliens.

There are some NJ legislators who want to end the wall between the criminal justice system, law enforcement, and federal immigration authorities - so that if an illegal alien is arrested on other crimes, that status will be passed along to immigration officials. That it would take a legislator to write to the State Attorney General directing that they do such a thing shows the blind eye to which the state had turned on this serious issue.

Indeed, there are continuing signs that the thugs who executed Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower are members of MS-13, although Newark police continue to discount that aspect of the case:

According to the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, Newark police pieced the case together with the help of MySpace, the social networking Web site, where the 16-year-old suspect had a page. Information on his page revealed that he had left New Jersey and listed friends in Virginia.

Although the page has been removed, The Washington Post has a saved version of it, showing the young man in sunglasses and a bandanna making a gang sign. On the page, he claimed to be a member of Guanacos Little Cycos Salvatruchos, part of the Latino gang MS-13 with ties to Northern Virginia. He noted his occupation as "smoke Piff" and his income as "$250,000 and higher." The page showed that the "last login" was Aug. 5, the day after the killings.

A man who was at the Oxon Hill apartment at the time of Godinez's arrest said Godinez had talked about being a member of MS-13. Newark police and other authorities say, however, that they have found no gang link to the killings.

Perhaps the Newark police are withholding that information so as to develop further leads or saving information for trial, but I wonder why the police would discount the ties to MS-13. Are they turning a blind eye to the problem, even as it stares them in the face?

UPDATE:
Godinez is fighting his extradition from Maryland to New Jersey. Also, this report claims that Godinez is a legal resident.

The 24-year-old Nicaraguan national nabbed early Saturday in suburban Washington D.C. and charged in the Aug. 4 Newark schoolyard shootings is fighting extradition, officials said this morning.

Rodolfo Godinez is being held in Prince George's County, Md. Had he waived his extradition hearing, he could have been returned to New Jersey this week. Instead, he will remain in the Maryland jail until the Sept. 20 hearing.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for Maryland State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, said the only argument Godinez, who is a legal resident, will be allowed to make during his extradition hearing is that he is not who the authorities say he is. If he can't make that case, Korionoff said, he will be returned to New Jersey.

Godinez was supposed to be deported in 1993 but no one ever bothered to follow up despite his numerous criminal justice entanglements, and no one apparently knew whether he was deported or not. Now, he's considered a legal resident? Can someone please clarify and straighten this out for me? When did he enter the country legally, and who determined this?

More on today's legal moves can be found at the WaPo.

UPDATE:
After days of saying that there weren't any links to gangs and discounting gang overtones with respect to the execution slayings, Mayor Booker has admitted that there are indeed gang overtones to the murders.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker acknowledged today there were "gang overtones" to the execution-style killings of three college students in a Newark school playground Aug. 4 but said police have no evidence to indicate the shootings were a gang attack.

"It is obvious that, as information continues to come forward, that we're seeing some gang overtones that are involved with this," Booker said at press conference a day after police arrested the sixth and final suspect. "Though we do not know with any specificity if this was a gang-related event whatsoever."

Police Director Garry McCarthy said the shootings have prompted his department to step up its intelligence on MS-13, a Hispanic gang with which some of the suspects identified.

It's better late than never, and Newark would be well served to get a crash course on dealing with these violent thugs. Dealing with them both via law enforcement and via immigration enforcement would be a good idea, though I doubt that Newark will change its sanctuary city status anytime soon, despite the links between violent crimes and illegal aliens in and around Newark and neighboring towns and cities.