Yes, Humans Can Be Illegal

I didn’t know Mollie Tibbetts, whose young, murdered body was found yesterday in an Iowa cornfield.  Earlier this morning I took a few minutes to scroll through her Instagram feed.  I was struck by how her posts reflected a breathtakingly ordinary life. I don’t mean boring, I mean so easy to relate to, so familiar, as if I could replace her name, “motibbs,” with one that I do know and all the posts would still make perfect sense.  Whose beautiful child hasn’t stood by their buddies mugging and cheesing for the camera? Whose teen hasn’t posted a selfie expressing doubt in their looks, held loved ones way too tight and smiled ear to ear? I didn’t know Mollie Tibbetts, but I intimately know six children just like her. Mollie’s profile, complete with silly emoji, is simple, yet elegant and bursting with life: “It’s a great day to be alive.”

Instagram

The usual suspects in the media, purveyors of fake news and the politicians they shill for, have all rushed to identify the man accused of Tibbetts murder, the man who led them to the body, as an “undocumented immigrant.”  He is, in fact, an illegal alien.

We’ve all seen the cute memes. ‘Humans can’t be aliens.’  ‘No person is illegal.’  Pithy quips that tug at the heart. What kind of cold heart does it take to call another human being an alien?  As the Associated Press advised its correspondents in a 2013 directive, only actions, not people, can be illegal.

Wrong.  People can be illegal, and Mollie Tibbett’s Mexican born, border jumping murderer is as illegal as they get.  As defined by Federal Law, written and ratified by Congress, he is just that, an illegal alien.  Those are the precise words used to describe his status.  He isn’t undocumented, nor is he an immigrant.  He’s a criminal.  Pretending he’s “just undocumented” as if somehow down the line he’ll overcome some formalities and become legal defies the reality.  And it costs American lives.  Early evidence reports indicate Tibbetts’ last hours were brutal, if not horrific.  As were Josh Wilkerson’s.   His family isn’t just separated from their son at the border temporarily, as the left rages over what’s happening at the U.S. – Mexico line, they are separated from him for eternity.  If you don’t know who Josh is, spend a few minutes reading about how he died and prepare to be enraged by the policies some members of Congress advocate for which allow this senseless loss of life of Americans to occur in America while they proclaim to represent those very same Americans.

Try as we might, we won’t bring justice to Mollie until we speak the cold truth.

President Trump, speaking in West Virginia, got it right last night.  “You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in very sadly from Mexico. And you saw what happened to that incredible beautiful young woman. Should have never happened. Illegally in our country,” he said. “We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace.”

Liberal politicians, lawmakers like Pelosi and Schumer, Harris and Cuomo, who advocate for and administer over sanctuary cities and the lax enforcement policies that make it difficult if not impossible to execute Federal Immigration Law must accept that they, to some degree, have blood on their hands every time an American is killed by an illegal alien.  They consider Mollie Tibbetts and many like her acceptable collateral damage as they seek to impede the enforcement of our Laws.  Mollie is a loss for all Americans, and it’s not collateral and it’s not acceptable.

Getting back to the Associated Press directive to remember that no human is an alien, that’s really important to remember in the supermarket or on line at the library.  But when defining a crisis, or when defining a class of people for a legal purpose, we must be precise in our language.  We cannot leave room for doubt, and one’s legal status is no place to equivocate.  The weak border policy that illegals exploit tolerates and rewards law breaking, and America is weaker as a result.  We need our leadership, particularly the partisan and self-righteous left, to set rhetoric aside and bring an end to this crisis.

Keep in mind that a government that fails to secure its borders is abdicating the essential function for which it is empowered.  Make no mistake, government doesn’t exist to provide us with privileges like medical care, rent and cell phones.  Government exists primarily to protect its citizens from any threat, foreign or domestic.  Calling criminal foreigners that cross our border illegally, whether they are women with children, gang members or just the average Jose looking for a better job, ‘undocumented’ is no less absurd than calling a suicide bomber a victim of his own attack.

Proponents of political correctness obsess over the credo that language should never be injurious to an ethnicity, race, gender, or religion.  In its truest form, insisting on political correctness is bullying, only it’s not your lunch money at stake, it’s your ability to express yourself effectively.  This effort to eliminate what some consider to be offensive remarks and actions and replace them with harmless substitutes comes at the expense of free expression, and worse.  Sometimes it’s our right to life that’s at risk.  We’re replacing fact with fiction at the behest of feelings.  I don’t care.  An undocumented migrant didn’t murder Mollie Tibbets, an illegal alien did, and that’s the kindest name I can muster for him.

Mollie Tibbetts, Instagram

In one of her Instagram posts, Mollie is sitting in a field of daisies with a copy of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude on her lap.  How fitting, as Mollie Tibbetts, like the Buendias, lived a short, preordained life, one that is enmeshed with unspeakable beauty and unspeakable sadness.