On Tuesday in Atlanta, kidnappers shot a family dog and took 14 year-old Ayvani Hope Perez captive, demanding $10,000 for her release. 150 law enforcement officers fanned out over the Atlanta area to find Ayvani and bring the perpetrators to justice.
When they found Ayvani 36 hours later and arrested the kidnappers, it turned out one of the kidnappers should never have had the chance to kidnap Ayvani. In fact, he shouldn’t have been in the U.S. at all.
Mexican Juan Alberto Contreras-Ramirez, aka Contreras-Rodriguez, is now being held on “federal immigration charges.” It’s not the first time Contreras-Ramirez has had a run-in with the law. Last year, he was arrested in a drug bust, then released.
He kidnapped a girl, and now he’s held on federal immigration charges. Did they check his immigration status when he was only into drugs?
Probably not. Here’s what the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Council President said recently,
“With regard to our government in general, I mean right now, that’s our problem with our immigration system,” National ICE Council President Chris Crane said. “[The problem] is not our immigration system, it’s our government, and it’s the ability of a president of the United States to ignore the laws enacted by Congress.”
“And it doesn’t matter what type of legislation we pass, until we address that problem, we will never have an immigration system that works,” he added. “As long as one person can act like a dictator and ignore the law and make his own laws through policy, we will never have a system that works.”
Crane and his union have been vocal opponents of the Obama administration’s immigration policies — notably its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — and the Senate-passed immigration bill.
“There is no more of a clear cut case in our country of the president overstepping his authority, ignoring the law, ignoring the Constitution, than the president’s ordering of ICE agents not to enforce U.S. immigration law,” he said. “Yet we have no investigations from Congress into this whatsoever.”
