Immigrants? What Immigrants?

After reading Ann Coulter’s recently released “Adios America!” I’m conscious of how our mainstream media deal with crimes committed by immigrants, legal and illegal. While some crimes are reported on locally, the status of the perpetrators is ignored. Coulter gives example after example too numerous to mention here, of how immigrants commit heinous crimes all over the United States, but the word “immigrant” is always conspicuously absent when the perpetrators are described.

As my wife and I drove through Portland, Maine last week listening to WGAN on the radio, we heard about Jimmy Odong’s crime spree. The twenty-five-year-old man was arrested for a carjacking at gunpoint in Portland and the armed robbery of a bank in nearby Freeport the same day. He’s also the chief suspect in another robbery earlier that day. Last February, Odong was arrested for aggravated assault in a Portland domestic incident.

Odong under arrest

“I’m glad that guy is off the streets,” my wife said as we passed neighborhoods in which some of those crimes occurred.

“Other than all that, Jimmy is probably a nice guy,” I responded.

“Yeah, right,” she said. The broadcast never mentioned that Jimmy Odong was an immigrant from Sudan.

The next day, I was reading the Portland Press Herald, a leftist paper next to which the Boston Globe appears moderate. In it was a picture of Jimmy Odong in police custody. It turns out that long before his most recent crime spree, Odong was well-known to police. In 2009, he was arrested after he “led police on a two-mile car chase through the city’s Bayside neighborhood and downtown Portland. During the chase, Odong crashed into several parked cars and struck a building. After abandoning his car, Odong fled before he was captured in Congress Square. He was charged with reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, eluding an officer, operating under the influence, operating without a license and four counts of leaving the scene of an accident.” Nowhere in the story did it mention that Odong was an immigrant. WGME and WCSH covered the story too, but neither of those TV stations mentioned it either.

Odong had been in trouble only a week before that 2009 incident when police arrested him for stealing two bottles of vodka from the Hannaford store on Forest Avenue. He resisted and nearly started a riot when a group of young black men surrounded police and shouted: “Killers!” and “Murderers!” Just week before that, police shot a young black immigrant, also from Sudan who had pulled a gun on them. The media identified him as an immigrant only because he could be portrayed as a victim and not a perpetrator. That’s how it is with our mainstream media: if the story is likely to stir up sympathy, mention “immigrant.” If the story is negative, leave it out.

We hear much about American white guys being accused of rape — even when the stories are false. Consider Tawana Brawley, Duke Lacrosse, and the University of Virginia cases alone. Our mainstream media were breathless in their coverage although none had any basis in fact. Why? Because the alleged perpetrators were American white guys. They ignore thousands of genuine sexual assaults by illegal immigrants however, and when they do report, they leave out information about race or immigration status.

Duke Lacrosse players falsely accused

Those of us who don’t limit our information-gathering to mainstream sources know America is experiencing an illegal alien crime wave. In “Adios America!” Coulter reports that fully one quarter of the entire population of Mexico has crossed the border into the United States, illegally in most cases, as well as one fifth of the population of El Salvador. Brietbart.com reports that illegals accounted for 37% of all federal prison sentences in the United States in 2014! Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald has documented that: “In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens.” In 1980, President Carter told Fidel Castro that he could send any Cubans here who wanted to come, so Castro emptied his jails and mental hospitals in the infamous Mariel Boat Lift. Looks like Mexico is taking a cue from Cuba, because we’re certainly not getting the cream of the Mexican crop.

Maine became a sanctuary state when Democrat Governor John Baldacci issued an executive order forbidding state employees from inquiring about the immigration status of anyone, anytime, whether applying for benefits or being stopped by police. The result? Thousands of illegal aliens poured into our tiny state, many going on welfare in violation of federal law. Republican Governor Paul LePage is only now turning off the welfare spigot. In 2011, the Center For Immigration Studies reported that, nationally, 57% of legal and illegal immigrants used at least one form of welfare.

Coulter contends our media grossly underreport the number of illegal aliens living here. She says there are at least 30 million, most of them on welfare. If this continues, Coulter makes a good case that it’s adios to America as we know it.