The headlines are shocking:
ICE arrests man driving pregnant wife to deliver a baby
ICE detains man driving pregnant wife to hospital
Oh those heartless SOBs working for ICE. Some guy minding his own business is taking his pregnant wife, who has a serious medical condition, to the hospital when all of a sudden, the immigration gestapo swoops in and tears him from the loving arms of his family.
The ICE agents asked him to step out of the vehicle after he was unable to produce identification, despite the couple protesting that they lived nearby and could go get it, Venegas said.
“The last thing he knew was that I was here in the hospital,” she told Univision.
Arrona Lara has never been in trouble with the law, she said.
He is now.
Immigration law enforcement officials said Saturday that a man who was arrested as he was taking his pregnant wife to a California hospital is wanted in Mexico on a murder warrant.
Joel Arrona-Lara, 36, was driving his wife to a hospital in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday when he stopped for gas. There was a sense of urgency because she had a medical condition that made a doctor’s supervision more urgent, said a legal representative for the family.
At the Arco station, the two were approached by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who asked for identification, according to their legal representative, Emilio Amaya, of the Community Services Center of San Bernardino.
In a statement Saturday, the immigration agency said Arrona-Lara was the subject of an “outstanding warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico on homicide charges.”
It stated that members of an ICE Fugitive Operations Team made the arrest. “ICE continues to focus its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security,” the agency said.
Obviously, once ICE agents saw that he was on the way to the hospital with his pregnant wife, they should have apologized profusely for interrupting his journey and sent him on his way, making him promise to turn himself in once his wife was OK.
That’s pretty much the counterargument to taking him into custody.
I have yet to hear an intelligent, coherent argument why anyone with a warrant out on him from any country and is here illegally should not be apprehended at the earliest possible moment. It’s ludicrous to believe otherwise. I suppose you could make the point that ICE agents could have followed him to the hospital and taken him into custody once his wife was getting treatment, but ICE is not a babysitting service.
And since the illegal was wanted on homicide charges, taking any chances at all that he might escape custody would have been negligent.
All of this weeping and wringing of hands over this case — and there has been a lot of it — fails to acknowledge that the man was here illegally in the first place. There lies the disconnect between those who want strong immigration enforcement and those who don’t.
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