By Naveen Athrappully
Contributing Writer
A criminal illegal immigrant from Honduras has been charged with a hit-and-run crime that took the life of an 8-year-old girl, the Department of Homeland Security said in a Saturday statement.
The alleged perpetrator, Elvin Elgardo Ramos-Caballero, illegally entered the United States in September 2015 and was released into the country by the Obama administration, DHS said. He never showed up for his immigration hearing, after which an immigration judge ordered him removed from the United States in May 2016.
The victim, Mora Gerety from Boise, Idaho, was born in February 2017 and died on Nov. 11 after being hit by Ramos-Caballero’s vehicle. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement the same day.
“Eight-year-old Mora Gerety’s precious life was taken by an illegal alien who should have never been in our country, let alone issued a driver’s license by the sanctuary state of Oregon,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin.
“Mora Gerety’s classmates, teachers, friends and our nation will carry this loss forever. Decades of open border polices have turned every community into a border town. These policies have deadly consequences.”
Sanctuary jurisdictions are places where local officials refuse to enforce immigration laws or comply with federal immigration authorities. According to an Aug. 5 list from the Department of Justice, 12 states, including Oregon, the District of Columbia, four counties, and 18 cities in the country are currently classified as following such policies.
In a video shared by DHS in a Nov. 23 X post, Micah Bock, deputy assistant secretary at the department, said that in the recent week, the department had “struck a blow to sanctuary city policies.”
He cited North Carolina, where he said open border policies have turned the city of Charlotte into a “sanctuary sewer,” with the city’s policies shielding nearly 1,400 criminal illegal immigrants from ICE and Customs and Border Protection, and illegals having been arrested for crimes such as beating cops, drunk driving, and assault with deadly weapons.
“For years, those pro-crime leaders have spat in the face of federal law enforcement and released these animals straight back into your streets, into your neighborhoods to prey on your families,” Bock said.
“Every major pressure point that Americans feel today — housing costs, school quality, wages, public safety, health care access, traffic, taxes — can be traced back in some form to the same root cause: mass uncontrolled immigration and the refusal to enforce our laws. That ends now.”
DHS launched Operation Charlotte’s Web, which aims to “dismantle, destroy, and deport” all criminal illegal aliens from the city, Bock said. In just the initial opening days, more than 250 such illegals have been rounded up by authorities in the Charlotte area, he added.
Arresting Criminal Illegal Immigrants
Democrats have criticized the Trump administration’s federal immigration policies.
In a Nov. 18 letter, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., called on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to eliminate DHS from the Memphis Safe Taskforce and to remove ICE agents from the city of Memphis.
The lawmaker claimed to have received “numerous reports” of ICE agents allegedly “terrorizing innocent, hardworking community residents” rather than targeting the “worst of the worst” illegals involved in crimes such as murder and rape.
“Memphis does not and has never had an immigration problem. The inclusion of ICE agents in Memphis is antithetical to the original purpose of the task force, which is supposed to be addressing violent crime. The presence of these agents is doing nothing but increasing fear and harassment,” the letter reads.
“It is alarming the way these detentions are taking place with unidentified masked individuals dragging people out of cars or accosting immigrant parents after they have dropped their children off to school.”
In a Friday statement, DHS dismissed such characterizations while listing out several illegal immigrants who have been arrested for committing crimes.
The department said that 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegals who are charged or convicted of a crime in the United States.
“As Democrat politicians try to bamboozle the American public and assert DHS law enforcement is not targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, our brave ICE law enforcement are putting their lives on the line to remove pedophiles, drug traffickers, and other violent thugs from American neighborhoods,” said McLaughlin.
“We are not going to allow these heinous criminals to terrorize innocent American children and families.”
