On July 4th, during festivities in her neighborhood, 12 year old Zina Linnik of Tacoma, WA. was abducted from the alley behind her house. The next day authorities contacted a legal (yes, legal, sans il-) alien, level 1 sex offender on an unrelated immigration violation and determined that he was involved in her kidnapping. This man eventually lead Pierce County authorities to the site of her body.
This is, of course, truly repulsive. The Tacoma area has a pretty bad reputation in the Puget Sound region; in fact, Pierce County more generally is pretty stereotypically undesirable. I've always kind of liked the Tacoma area, and have family in some surrounding communities. However, stories like this one can, and do, happen anywhere.
So, here comes Michelle Malkin...
A person of interest was detained by local police a few days ago. He’s a 42-year-old sex offender who is being held for failing to register and for an immigration violation. It’s yet another example of the disgraceful, fatal negligence of the feds to track and deport illegal alien criminals–and deportable, convicted legal immigrants imprisoned for committing felonies, like Adhahn–after they serve their sentences
I'm sorry, Ms. Malkin, but the issue here is not his immigration status. This man is a violent pervert, but violent perversions are not limited strictly to foreign nationals. If you were being intellectually honest, you would be railing against perceived inadequacies in sex-crime sentencing. This man's immigration status had nothing to do with his sexual delinquencies. Yes, the Federal Government had legal standing to deport this man in the early 1990s, but they didn't. I'd imagine they had more important priorities toward which they dedicated their finite resources than pursuing a level 1 sex offender who was convicted in a state court, and tracked by state authorities; authorities who are unable to deport immigrants, and whose job is not to take up the Fed's slack. Now, unless you want to treat all sex offenders the same (levels 1, 2, and 3), and treat statutory rape as comparable to aggravated sexual assault, then I don't see any institutional problem here.
I give Malkin credit because she has used her bully pulpit to advertise the different routes through which people can contribute money to ease the financial burden of the funeral services (the Linnik family is poor), but let's be frank; Michelle Malkin doesn't offer such services for every abused, abducted, or tragedy stricken family in the country. She makes noise only when she can use it to advance her agenda. It's disingenuous - and really, fundamentally dishonest - to make this horrible abduction and murder of a child a part of the debate over our national immigration policies. Were this just a story about a criminal legal immigrant, or a sex offending immigrant who was still in the country, it would fit into the immigration debate. If Malkin was outraged that a sex offender re-offended, then this story would fit into that debate. But this man's immigration status (which was legal) has nothing to do with his sexual problems and the abduction of Zina. I don't pretend to speak for the family, but if it were me and mine (God forbid), I would think that I would want to avoid being pulled into national political dispute.
