The consequences of illegal immigration

Veteran police officers and emergency services workers were taken aback by the terrible carnage they found in a Northwest Baltimore apartment on May 27: The bodies of three murdered young children — a 9-year-old boy and his sister had been partially beheaded, and a 10-year-old boy who had been decapitated. Hours after the discovery of their bodies, police arrested two men, ages 17 and 22, and charged them with killing the children. Police have been investigating the possibility that the men, who are related to the murdered children, may have killed them in retaliation for their parents’ failure to repay them for helping smuggle the youngsters into the United States.

Right now, about the only thing known for certain is that the accused, the slain children and their mothers were all living in the United States illegally. There are two separate, distinct issues in this case. The first is the unspeakable nature of the murders themselves. Whoever committed these crimes deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

But the second issue is one that most politicians want to avoid discussing: the fact that some illegal immigrants are dangerous criminals. There are more than 300,000 “alien absconders” in the United States today — people illegally in the country who have been ordered deported. These include an estimated 80,000 illegal criminal aliens — among them convicted murderers and child molesters, according to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Marylanders have not been strangers to crimes committed by illegals. Sniper Lee Malvo is an illegal immigrant. So, too, was the Peruvian who killed Baltimore County Police Sgt. Mark Parry in 2002 by crashing into his patrol car. There also is Jose Alvarado, who molested two boys in Montgomery County. He served 18 months in jail after molesting a boy and was deported to El Salvador in 1998. Then, he illegally re-entered the United States and made his way to the Rockville area, where he molested another child last year.

Unfortunately, Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley and Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan — likely candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006 — seem to be competing with one another to see who can do more to encourage illegal immigration to the state. Both have lobbied against the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act, or CLEAR, introduced by Rep. Charlie Norwood, Georgia Republican, which would encourage better federal-state law enforcement cooperation to apprehend illegal immigrants. Mr. O’Malley is now spearheading a P.R. campaign to attract immigrants to Baltimore — without distinguishing between legal and illegal ones. That’s shameful, because the first kind of immigrant is playing by the rules, while the other is involved in breaking the law. Mr. O’Malley’s failure to make such distinctions sends the wrong kind of message about Baltimore.