If an illegal immigrant manages to live through the trip across the border without dying from exposure, drowning or being gang raped, they are then free to move about the country.
While a majority of illegal immigrants can count the actual border crossing as their only crime here, there are far too many who cannot. The cost of their being here weighs heavy on the victims of their crimes.

MS-13

Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 is one of the most violent gangs in the world. In fact, Lisa Ling from National Geographic called them the “World’s Most Dangerous Gang.” Ling details her trip to El Salvador and the effects MS-13 is having there.

Even though MS-13 originated here, a huge percentage of the gang today are illegal immigrants, members who crossed the border, bringing their style of remorseless carnage with them:

In recent years, MS-13’s reputation as a particularly brutal gang was cemented by a series of incidents, several of them in Northern Virginia. In one, a former MS-13 member who had become a police informant was fatally stabbed and her head almost severed. In another, MS-13 members used a machete to cut off several fingers of a rival gang member.

The Houston shootout, however, raised questions about whether the gang — whose original members in Los Angeles included people with paramilitary training who fled the civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s — is evolving into an organization that is in their image.

The Houston incident sparked an FBI investigation that has reached into El Salvador to try to determine whether MS-13 members are receiving formal training in weapons and military tactics before they come to the USA — often as illegal immigrants.

MS-13 is currently spreading across America like wildfire. While they started in California, they are giving law enforcement officials in Virgina their usual style of mayhem. The Washington Post reported last month:

Of the 341 gang members arrested by ICE in the state between February 2005 and September 2007, almost 80 percent were members of MS-13, the study found. Gang investigators estimate that 90 percent of the members of that gang are illegal immigrants, the study said.

When they arrive in a new city, the announcement is made with violence.

Within one hour, two people were found murdered miles apart in suburban Nassau County, N.Y. After an intensive investigation, police officials learned the murders were the work of the violent street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13. It also soon became apparent the gang was sending a bold message to its members and associates. That message: “If you are not loyal, you are dead.”

But there was another message in the brutal slayings for the people of Long Island. And that message was that gang violence had moved into the upper middle class enclaves of the Island, into the kinds of communities where the locals assume that crime is somebody else’s problem.

Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) is unfortunately becoming everybody’s problem. This plague that came to Long Island from El Salvador by way of the streets of Los Angeles follows the same migratory patterns as the Salvadoran immigrant community that it preys upon, fanning out across the United States from ethnic enclaves in California.

The spread of this gang is bad enough, but now rumors are spreading about MS-13 working with al-Qaeda. The Boston Herald reported in 2005:

In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns the gang may be smuggling Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into the country. Law enforcement officials have long believed that MS-13 controls alien smuggling routes along Mexico.

As I wrote yesterday, 42,000 Other Than Mexican border jumpers were simply released into the country after having been caught. The connection of MS-13 and the organization that attacked the United Sates on September 11th is more than troubling. It is a threat to national security.

Drunk Driving

I don’t watch Bill O’Reilly, but I don’t know anyone who has not seen this shouting match between him and Geraldo:

Geraldo has his points, because the reason the story was on the factor was because it involved an illegal immigrant who was behind the wheel, drunk. But Bill is right also. Those people would still be alive if the immigration laws were enforced and the borders were secured.

So would these people:

• Two teenage girls were killed by Alfredo Ramos, who was drunk behind the wheel. Ramos had been convicted of drunk driving once before, but served no jail time. But what baffles me is why he was not deported when convicted of his first offense:
  

  Beach Police say even though Ramos was also previously charged with an alcohol related misdemeanor in their city, State law tells local police they can only contact ICE if they are arresting a suspected illegal immigrant on a felony, like rape or murder, or if they’re involved in gang activity, or have been deported before.

  In fact, Virginia Beach Police say they will not even ask a suspected illegal immigrant about their status.

  “It could be possibly a violation of their civil rights to ask if they are an illegal alien or not,” spokesperson Jimmy Barnes told us.

  I don’t suppose it is a violation of the girls’ civil rights to be killed because we don’t want to enforce our own laws.

• Iraq war veteran Marine Cpl. Brian Mathews was sitting at a stop light when Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano slammed his car into the Marine’s, killing both Mathews and his date.

  Once again, this wasn’t the illegal immigrant’s first offense.

  In February, Columbia police responded to a non-injury accident in a parking lot involving Morales-Soriano. According to police reports, he was “unable to maintain his balance” during a field sobriety test. He was given four citations and allowed to leave the scene of the accident with a relative after he refused to take a Breathalyzer test.

  Although Maryland law requires an automatic 120-day forfeiture of a drivers license for refusing the test, Morales-Soriano’s license was not suspended after the accident.
  
  Prosecutors dropped all charges in the February accident due to “weak evidence,” allowing Morales-Soriano to recover his seized license from the police and to avoid a fine and points added to his license.

  Mathews was 21 years old. His date was 24.

• Lyn Tsuji was shopping for Thanksgiving when her life was shattered. Mauricio Salazar, drunk behind the wheel, crashed into her car and killed her young son, Alex. Salazar was in the country illegally.
• Helen Meghan Hughes, 22, her stepbrother Ben Leonard, 16 and Jennifer Carter, 18, were all killed when Pastor Rios Sanchez crossed the center line in his vehicle and crashed into their car. Sanchez was in the country illegally and had been convicted of drunk driving once before.
  

  And court records show he was accused of a similar count in March and another in April. One count was dismissed and Sanchez failed to show up for court on the other.

• Ramiro Gallegos killed Scott Gardner by driving his truck into Gardner’s car. Gallegos was convicted for DUI twice before he took the high school teacher’s life. He was in the country illegally.
• 18-year-old Min Soon Chang was killed when Jorge Humberto Hernandez-Soto drove into his car at over 100 miles per hour. Hernandez-Soto was not only drunk, but had been convicted of DUI twice before and had been deported 17 times. Chang was a freshman at the University of North Carolina.

There are more examples than I can share. None of these people needed to die, but because the federal government refuses to secure the border, and state and local cities refuse to deport, people continue to die on the nation’s roads because of drunk driving illegal immigrants.

We have only looked at two areas of the human cost of illegal immigration in America, and already the total is too high. Tomorrow we will continue to look at the human cost inside America for our government’s refusal to secure the country’s borders.

This is part 3 of a 5 part series on Illegal Immigration
Part 1: Illegal Immigration and National Security – It Is Worse Than You Know
Part 2: The Human Cost – Part 1: Coming to America
Part 3: The Human Cost – Part 2: Out of the Shadows, Into the Morgue
Part 4: The Human Cost – Part 3: Importing Pedophelia
Part 5: Secure The Border. Then What?