Lawless state enabled child's rape...

Yet Mass. pols scorns Arizona's

by Michael Graham
DNN Staff - EXCLUSIVE!
Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2010

For a little girl who spent this weekend lying in a Massachusetts hospital, the debate over illegal immigration isn’t about race or politics.

It’s about life and death.

Four-year-old Heidi was brutally raped on Saturday. Now she’s listed in “serious” condition at Baystate Medical Center.

Springfield police have charged 22-year-old Edlizar Mazariegos with aggravated rape of a child with force. Mazariegos, who regularly traveled up and down the East Coast without a driver’s license, is an illegal immigrant. As of this writing, he is on the run from Massachusetts police - likely for the first time ever.

He’s certainly had no need to run before.

This is, after all, “Welcoming Massachusetts,” where liberal Democrats openly support benefits for criminal immigrants and oppose immigration law enforcement.

Gov. Deval Patrick isn’t just ambivalent about border security, he’s openly hostile. He shut down Gov. Mitt Romney’s state police immigration-enforcement program and - in a moment of wince-inducing irony - was on my radio station repeating his opposition to local immigration enforcement even as the Herald was reporting the story of Heidi’s rape on its Web site.

This past weekend, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona was in Boston for the National Governors Association meeting. She’ll was greeted by protesters from groups who support Patrick’s pro-illegal stance, like the far-left ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Brewer was denounced here by politicians and media pundits alike. But for what?

For a policy that, had it been in place in Massachusetts, could have prevented the rape of this little girl.

Nobody argues that all illegal immigrants are rapists, or that most of them commit violent crime. That’s clearly nonsense.

But what is inarguable is that politicians who allow criminal immigrants to live openly and easily in their states are, at some level, responsible for the crimes they may commit and the corruption they engender.

Rhode Island understands that. When an illegal immigrant kidnapped and raped a woman in 2008 - an illegal immigrant the police had repeatedly arrested and released - Rhode Island politicians came to their senses and began a local enforcement program.

Voters get it, too.

According to Rasmussen Research, 56 percent of Americans oppose the Obama Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona, and 61 percent want a similar law in their own state. Among likely voters, 86 percent say immigration will be an important part of how they vote this November.

The question is whether Patrick and Beacon Hill liberals will ever “get it?” Will they be moved by little Heidi’s rape to listen to reason?

I know they won’t because Heidi’s not the first. Nearly every day there’s another story about a crime, crash or con job committed by criminal immigrants here.

Remember the state rep who got rear-ended by an illegal immigrant?

Or the Pakistanis allegedly linked to the Times Square truck bomber?

Or the little boy groped in the bathroom of the Market Basket in Raynham?

And on and on . . .

The sad truth about liberals like Patrick is that for all their “speaking truth to power” rhetoric, they lack real courage.

Confronting illegal immigration involves entering the political arena of racial and ethic politics. You have to be so committed to doing what’s right and affirming the rule of law that you can withstand the knee-jerk accusations of racism and bigotry.

If you do, you’ll be standing up for innocent victims like Heidi. If you don’t, you’ll be playing cynical race-based politics.

And for Massachusetts Democrats, that’s not even a close call.

Sorry, Heidi.