fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Justice Delayed

Most Americans probably assume that once the wheels of government start turning there is a certain inevitability about the outcome, but that may not be true if there is an election coming up. Last week there appeared an interesting news item relating to Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. Menendez reportedly employed illegal immigrant and […]

Most Americans probably assume that once the wheels of government start turning there is a certain inevitability about the outcome, but that may not be true if there is an election coming up. Last week there appeared an interesting news item relating to Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Menendez reportedly employed illegal immigrant and teenage sex offender Luis Abraham Sanchez Zavaleta as an unpaid intern in his Senate office. The Homeland Security Department (DHS) instructed federal agents not to arrest Sanchez, currently 18 years old and an immigrant from Peru, until after Election Day even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sought to detain him in early October. Several complaints by the ICE officers seeking to reverse the DHS decision were rejected.

According to the Associated Press article, “Menendez, D-N.J., who advocates aggressively for pro-immigration policies, was re-elected in November with 58 percent of the vote. He said his staff was notified about the case Monday, he personally learned about the case from AP’s reporting and knew nothing about whether DHS delayed the arrest. The senator said his staff asks interns whether they are in the country legally but cannot check to be sure… During discussions about when and where to arrest Sanchez, the U.S. reviewed Sanchez’s application for permission to stay in the country as part of President Barack Obama’s policy to allow up to 1.7 million young illegal immigrants avoid deportation and get permission to work for up to two years. As a sex offender, he would not have been eligible.”

Is it credible that a foreign-born intern working for a U.S. Senator would be hired without any background checks that would, inter alia, determine whether or not he or she was an American citizen? Or that office staff “cannot check to be sure” about immigration status? No. Apart from the imminence of an election, could there possibly have been any good reason why the arrest was deliberately and repeatedly delayed by someone in authority at DHS? No.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here