June 21, 2016

Illegal Immigrant Tries to Kill Donald Trump!

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An illegal immigrant who is apparently mentally ill tried to grab a policeman’s gun yesterday so that he could shoot Donald Trump. I gather that it was a fairly half-hearted effort, but still: “Illegal Immigrant Tries to Kill Trump”! Where are the headlines? Jim Geraghty comments:

The recent chaos on the Trump campaign, as big a story as it is, shouldn’t cause this event to disappear from the public’s attention. It illuminates the disconcerting fact that once legal temporary immigrants enter the country, the authorities have no real way to keep track of them. And a lot of them take advantage of that fact….We need border security. But even if you completely sealed the southern border, America would still have a significant number of illegal immigrants walking its streets.

Quite so. But forget the media. We all know they’re in thrall to political correctness and won’t print anything that might cast Mexican immigrants in an unfavorable light. But what about Trump? His Twitter feed is empty. Why isn’t he shouting about this from the rooftops? I mean, it totally vindicates his point about building a wall and—

Wait. What? I should read the whole story. Fine. Here’s the BBC:

A British man arrested while trying to grab a policeman’s gun at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas has been described in his home town as “a strange one”….Surrey Police said it was “providing family liaison support on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”….The BBC understands he lived with his mother Lynne in Dorking, Surrey until about 18 months ago.

Surrey police? Dorking? A British man? What’s that all about?

Ah, I get it. Michael Sandford is white. And he’s from Britain. A wall wouldn’t keep him out. And anyway, Trump’s base doesn’t hate residents of Dorking who overstay their visas. He’s not the right kind of illegal immigrant. So we’ll all ignore him.

POSTSCRIPT: On another note, Geraghty, like many conservatives, complains that we have “no real way to keep track” of visitors who overstay their visas. That’s true. But what exactly do they expect? GPS tracking collars? It’s not as if someone who’s illegally overstaying their visa is going to voluntarily check in at their nearest consulate. And even if we did track them somehow, what good would it do? I’m puzzled by this whole thing.

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