For his next act, California Gov. Gavin Newsom will cut off his constituents’ noses to spite their faces.
Here is the point at which the notion of “sanctuary state” becomes a mockery of itself.
Per the Los Angeles Times:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Newsom on Monday pardoned seven former felons, including two Cambodian refugees the Trump administration wants to deport, in his first acts of clemency since the Democrat took office in January.
Newsom doubled down on his act of petulance in a speech to members of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association in which he stated:
I’m constantly trying to understand the moment we’re living in, the xenophobia, the nativism that marks the populism of this moment. Any of us who are students of history know that it’s not without precedent. It’s not novel. It’s hardly new. It’s very familiar.
So who exactly are these fine, upstanding individuals that the governor has turned loose on the streets of his state’s cities? One of them is a man named Hay Hov, who arrived in the U.S. as a legal refugee when he was 6. Since then, he has been convicted of solicitation to commit murder and participation in a criminal street gang.
Another, Kang Hen, fled to the Bay Area with his family to escape the Cambodian genocide in the 1980s but has since been convicted of grand theft.
The remaining five refugees were convicted for felony offenses ranging from selling or possessing drugs to forgery.
The Times article, which is sympathetic to Newsom and the refugees, notes that all seven of the pardoned felons had completed their prison sentences, which when you think about it is saying absolutely nothing. The recidivism rate for U.S. prisoners is 67.8% within three years of release and 76.6% within five. Only time will time if these ex-cons intend to keep their noses clean.
But Newsom isn’t convinced. His office said in a statement Monday:
By granting these pardons to people who are transforming their lives, the Governor is seeking to remove barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction.
When these “aggrieved souls” follow in the footsteps of criminal refugees before them and commit deadly crimes, the blood will be on Newsom’s hands.
