An illegal alien with a criminal history was ordered deported from Colorado by an immigration judge last December. In January, he sought refuge in a church and played the sympathy card in the media as if he had an entitlement not to be deported and “separated” from his family. He wasn’t deported. Now, in the ultimate avoidable death, this illegal alien with a long arrest record allegedly killed Sean Buchanan last Friday in a reckless driving crash. Mr. Buchanan is now separated from his wife and five children, permanently, in the grave.

Miguel Ramirez Valiente had the prototypical rap sheet of a criminal alien and a habitual drunk driver, yet he was never deported and was allowed to cycle in and out of the criminal justice system as if he were an American for years. He is a Salvadoran national who has been here illegally for 14 years. Valiente was arrested for reckless endangerment in 2011 and domestic violence in 2016. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to DUI and had his license revoked, according to records obtained by Denver’s Channel 7 news.

According to that local ABC affiliate, “One day before the deadly crash, his probation for that DUI was extended because he had not completed alcohol therapy and community service.” One person who knew him described Valiente as “an alcoholic and an abuser."

Sean Buchanan was riding his motorcycle between Colorado Springs and Castle Rock on Highway 83 last Friday in preparation for a family move to a new location when he was struck by Valiente’s truck when it veered into oncoming traffic. It’s not clear yet whether Valiente was driving drunk in this incident.

The question is, how could someone be so known to authorities as a habitual public danger and also an illegal alien, yet he was going to alcohol therapy? Why was he not going to alcohol therapy in El Salvador?

Here is where the details get maddening and implicate another corrupt loophole in our system never intended by Congress. Valiente was pulled over for a traffic stop in 2011 and would have been deported, but an immigration judge granted him relief and allowed him to apply for a U-visa as a victim of a crime. Many terrible criminal aliens have abused this loophole, which was originally designed for select few individuals.

The case was reopened against Valiente after he racked up more criminal arrests, and after he failed to appear in immigration court last year, he was ordered deported in December 2018. That’s when Valiente sought refuge in the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Colorado Springs along with other illegal aliens. In January, he held a press conference crying about the potential for him to be separated from his family, and it was widely reported in the national media. "I can’t be separated from them," he said. "I have always worked hard to support my family, and they depend on me."

Well, if only he had been “separated” and removed. Sean Buchanan would still be alive. Yet because we have the rule of virtue-signaling and not the rule of law, he wasn’t deported, and we are left with no virtue but only signals. A quick search shows that not a single national media outlet (and very few local ones) picked up on the tragic sequel to Valiente’s non-deportation.

Jose and Anna Pacheco and their 10-year-old son Angel were sleeping Saturday night in their trailer home in Sutter County, California. But Ismael Huazo-Jardinez, a previously deported illegal alien, was allegedly driving drunk, missed a turn on the road, and slammed straight into the trailer, killing the three Pachecos, leaving the severely injured 11-year-old daughter, Mariana, as the only surviving member of the family.

The ink had barely dried on my column last week about two unreported illegal alien alleged DUI manslaughters in California when news broke about this triple fatality resulting from alleged drunk driving. I suspected this was yet another unreported illegal alien vehicular homicide. Initially, I didn’t hear any news back from ICE about a detainer, so I assumed there was no way an illegal alien who had killed three people could have been let out on $300,000 bond and therefore presumed the suspect was a citizen. But evidently that was the case, because ICE’s Fugitive Operations Team arrested Jardinez on Tuesday and is holding him pending the criminal proceedings.

According to ICE spokesman Paul Prince, “Ismael Huazo-Jardinez is an illegally present Mexican national.” He told CR in a statement that “the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended him in Arizona and granted him voluntary return to Mexico in February 2011.”

Yet thanks to the sanctuary of California, the suspect, like many other criminals, was incentivized to come back and must have returned to the state sometime afterwards.

According to the local CBS affiliate, Huazo-Jardinez was granted bail the next day, despite protests from the California Highway Patrol. Thanks to new state laws and judicial guidance, criminals booked in jail are rarely denied bail, and many are now released even without bond.

The fact that our border is wide open and so many criminals can come back is disturbing enough. But this is yet another case where despite another arrest of the criminal, he was not turned over to ICE. According to the local sheriff’s office, as reported by the local NBC affiliate, Huazo-Jardinez had a prior conviction for reckless driving.

What’s worse is that even after he was arrested again for a triple vehicular homicide, he was still released without being turned over to ICE. It appears that ICE had to get him on their own. How many thousands of illegal aliens are in this country with criminal records, have been allowed to go free, and ICE is not even aware of their existence? By definition, every crime that is committed by these individuals is completely avoidable.

Over the past few years, Sen. Tom Cotton has stood alone bucking the political elites and asserting what is obvious to anyone who lives outside the political bubble – that we have an under-incarceration problem in this country relative to the crimes committed. For every criminal the political elites believe is over-sentenced, there are endless numbers of career gang members who are as dangerous as can be, yet are either never sentenced to prison or are incarcerated for a short period of time, despite having massive criminal histories. Too many innocent victims needlessly die as a result of this forgotten form of catch-and-release. Sadly, it appears that Tonya Horn and her daughter, Rylee Ewald, are the latest victims of the under-incarceration of the worst offenders.

On the evening of April 19, Rylee Ewald was like any 8-year-old girl enjoying a car ride with her parents on the way back from taking their dog to the vet when they were struck by the speeding stolen vehicle of Andrew Munoz and Deanna Alvarez. Rylee and her mother, Tonya, died in the crash, and her dad, Eric, is in the hospital with a broken pelvis, multiple broken ribs, a broken jaw, and a damaged spine. The family has set up a GoFundMe to cover the medical expenses.

This is a terrible tragedy beyond belief. And the details and past criminal history of the driver of the other car make it an avoidable tragedy.

At around 5:40 p.m., Andrew Munoz, 27, and his passenger, Deanna Alvarez, 35, were pulled over by Oklahoma City police officers for a driving violation. Munoz pretended to slow down, but then gunned the engine of the pickup truck, ran through a stop sign, and plowed into the family’s SUV, killing Tonya and Rylee. Police discovered that the vehicle had been stolen, and they also found methamphetamine and firearms inside it.

Munoz was charged with two counts of second degree murder, trafficking methamphetamine, possession of drug proceeds, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, felony eluding, and possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony.

Alvarez, the passenger, who had no prior arrest record, was charged with two counts of second degree murder, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, possession of drug proceeds, and possession of a firearm while in the commission of a felony.

Munoz has a 10-year criminal history of every single criminal act committed on the night that led to the murder of Tonya and Rylee, yet he remained free most of the time!

According to records from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Munoz was arrested in 2011 and convicted in 2012 for eluding a police officer. At the same time, he was arrested for distributing drugs. In 2017, he was convicted of multiple charges of using unauthorized vehicles and of drug distribution.

Yet despite his repeat offenses, he only served probation for recent vehicle theft and served just five months on drug charges before being released last August.

This is a repeat offender who has shown a proclivity for danger on the streets in multiple ways, yet he was barely locked up. And this is Oklahoma.

Now, fast-forward to the issue of criminal justice “reform,” with both parties in Washington, as well as so-called conservatives led by Jared Kushner pushing to have people like this released even earlier. They successfully passed a bill last year granting lower sentences and early release for these very violent drug offenders who graduated to the federal system! The ones in the state system are bad enough, but the guys Kushner and company are trying to let out are worse.

We were lied to by the political class about “first-time, low level, non-violent” offenders being locked up for 100 years. It’s simply not true, not even in state systems.

Too many arrests never result in a charge, and too many charges result in probation or little jail time, even after numerous arrests and convictions. The reality is that the political class in all 50 states now views drug trafficking and driving offenses, such as stolen vehicles or drunk driving, as “low-level” offenses, but most offenders, especially the repeat ones, are inherently violent and are usually gang-bangers. That is most certainly true for the ones targeted by U.S. attorneys for federal charges.

Murders would often be preventable if repeat criminals were sentenced justly. These stories play out every day, but there is nobody standing for victims of crime or for law enforcement. The weight of the political, social, and elitist world is behind every single criminal. Some even become celebrities themselves. The victims are all but forgotten except by God.

Last week, in an interview with Time magazine, Kushner said that the issue of jailbreak “was not Ds vs Rs, but really us vs. them.” Well, if everyone in politics agrees with him, then who is the “them?” Clearly, it’s law enforcement and victims of crime who just don’t matter to the political elites.

Two more Americans – a Washington state sheriff’s deputy and an Alabama schoolteacher – were killed this week because we senselessly allow illegal aliens to remain in our country.

Gouverneur Morris, one of the Pennsylvania delegation, with Benjamin Franklin, at the Constitutional Convention, is said to have declared, “Every society from a great nation down to a club had the right of declaring the conditions on which new members should be admitted; there can be room for no complaint.” As part of those conditions, we require all those who come here on visas to leave by a certain time or apply for an extension, and we require anyone coming to the border for asylum status to show up for a court date. But if we do not enforce those provisions by deporting violators, our laws are a joke and we have no dominion over our territory. Now, two more lives have been taken by senseless illegal alien murders, all because we no longer appreciate the foundational principle of sovereignty as expressed by Morris, the primary author of the actual prose of the Constitution.

Sonya Jones, a schoolteacher in a Christian academy in Mobile, Alabama, was killed on Monday when an illegal alien from Guatemala hit her head-on after crossing the center line of a local highway. Domingo Marcos, 16, is a poster child for what is going on now at the border. He came here in 2017 claiming asylum at the Arizona border, as encouraged and coached by the smugglers. He was, of course, denied asylum and issued final deportation orders. But as I reported earlier this week, there are over one million illegal aliens in this country with final deportation orders who still remain in this country, and very few of them are being deported. Marcos was one of 129,000 Guatemalans with final orders who remain here, and now a popular schoolteacher has paid the price with her life. Marcos was arrested when he was caught fleeing the scene of the accident.

This tragic death was completely avoidable. How many more ticking time bombs of drivers (drunk or otherwise), drug traffickers, murderers, and robbers will remain in the country and do harm to our people as a result of the lack of basic enforcement of our most foundational federal laws? Why is it that if we, as American citizens, absconded from court, failed to renew our licenses, or failed to pay speeding tickets, the law would easily catch up with us, but somehow illegal aliens and visa overstays remain here indefinitely?

Because of an illegal alien who overstayed his agriculture visa, a sheriff’s deputy in Washington state is dead and another local police officer wounded. According to Fox News, “29-year-old Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro, a Mexican citizen, entered the U.S. at Laredo, Texas, in April 2014 on a temporary agricultural worker visa.” The maximum duration of an H-2A visa is no longer than three years. Del Toro’s visa expired at some time several years ago, but he still remained in the country illegally for an unknown amount of time. Tuesday night, following a road rage incident with Del Toro, police were called out to the scene, and the illegal alien opened fire on the cops. The 42-year-old Kittitas County Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Thompson was killed, and 22-year-old Kittitas Police Officer Benito Chavez was wounded. Thompson is reportedly the first law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty in this county since 1927. The suspect in his killing should long ago have been removed from this country.

Why are so many people able to remain in our country completely unvetted after they overstay their visas? Congress passed a law in 1996 mandating the creation of a visa tracking system to monitor and apprehend those caught overstaying their visas, and its implementation was urged by the 9/11 Commission in light of the security problems with so many of these “undocumented” individuals. Just in 2017 alone, 700,000 individuals overstayed their visas, and 85 percent of them still remain in the country.

Between all those who overstay their visas and the one million illegal aliens who remain here after final deportation orders (plus another 1.5 million who have “pending final deportation orders”), ICE obviously has its hands full. This is one of the many reasons why Trump should have held the line on a clean continuing resolution last month to keep this issue alive and make Democrats take tough votes on issues related to deportations. ICE needs more agents than even Border Patrol does. The border is all a policy problem at this point with our self-destructive asylum process. No number of new border agents will change that.

The distinguishing characteristic of a strong sovereign nation compared to an undeveloped country is the ability to monitor and control an external movement into the territory and the ability to apprehend and remove those who trespass on the national private property rights of the people. Yet on every measure, we seem to fail not just in our ability to prevent people from infiltrating our territory, but in monitoring and apprehending those who successfully remain in our country illegally. We the people are regulated or monitored in every aspect of our lives, but somehow illegal infiltrators seem to evade the juggernaut of Big Brother. And all murders that occur as a result of this failure are 100 percent avoidable.