It didn’t take long for open-borders advocates to target the tougher new policy on legal presence adopted recently by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. Less than two months after an illegal immigrant struck a car carrying a group of elderly nuns in Prince William County, protesters picketed DMV offices in Arlington and Richmond to pressure Virginia officials to back down. They should not. On Aug. 1, Carlos Martinelly-Montano’s Subaru hit a guardrail, then slammed into the nuns’ Toyota. Sister Denise Mosier was killed instantly and two others were critically injured and remain hospitalized. The 23-year-old Bolivian has since been indicted on drunk driving and involuntary manslaughter charges.
As Prince William Police Chief Charles Deane pointed out to Department of Homeland Security officials, this was Martinelly-Montano’s third DUI in three years. He was being deported when DHS inexplicably gave him an Employment Authorization Document (I-766), which he used to obtain a legal Virginia ID. Deane asked DHS to close “this glaring gap,” which “can result in criminal aliens being inappropriately released. …” DMV also announced it would no longer accept the work permit as proof of legal presence. Characterizing this as an “overreaction,” the American Civil Liberties Union, CASA de Maryland, the National Council of La Raza and other groups in the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations sent a letter urging DMV to rescind the new policy immediately, and accusing agency officials of “re-victimizing” refugees and asylum seekers who supposedly can’t produce any of the other 20 documents DMV continues to accept.
Nowhere in the letter does the coalition acknowledge that the fatal accident in Prince William should never have happened, or that this “one case” is yet another illustration that the “catch and release” policy that DHS supposedly ended is still in force at the federal level. In August, CNSNews.com reported that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement database obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request listed 481 illegal immigrants from four countries designated by the State Department as “state sponsors of terrorism” (Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba) and nine of 10 “countries of interest.” The 481 were caught in the United States between 2007 and 2009, then released by DHS back into the general population. All 481 are now fugitives from the law. How many of them are members of terrorist sleeper cells waiting for the signal from Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to wreak death and destruction against innocent American men, women and children? Virginia is to be commended for attempting to end this destructive cycle before somebody else gets hurt. State officials should also consider taking DHS to court and asking a federal judge to issue a permanent injunction against catch and release.
