Thanks to Biden administration policies, the Department of Homeland Security won’t deport a career criminal illegal alien who covered Washington, DC’s Union Station (home to Amtrak and subway stations and many shops). As Townhall notes, “In President Biden’s America and Mayor Bowser’s Washington, career criminals are increasingly emboldened to continue their lawlessness. Slaps on the wrist show criminals that crime actually does pay. A prime example is playing out just blocks away from the U.S. Capitol and congressional office buildings at D.C.’s Union Station where someone defaced the columns along the entrance to the transit hub with large swastikas scrawled across the pillars and facade….Amtrak, the entity that owns Union Station, brushed the swastikas aside as “property damage” rather than a hate crime.”
Last month, police tracked down the man they believed to be responsible for the swastikas and arrested 34-year-old Mexican national Geraldo Pando. His arrest record was located by The Washington Examiner. It reports that “Pando had an extensive, 35-page criminal history in Colorado before he arrived in the District of Columbia recently,” and that Pando had been deported twice before.
Moreover, “Pando had also been detained and arrested a week prior to the Union Station incident for vandalizing the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with Pando’s run-ins with federal, state, and local law enforcement” but he was back on the street and in a position to draw swastikas all over Union Station after “Capitol Police released him because ICE did not ask that he be detained until he could be transferred into federal custody.”
Congressman Jim Banks expressed dismay in a tweet:
An illegal immigrant vandalized the Capitol Police HQ and was immediately released. A week later he spray painted swastikas on Union station. The Biden admin will not deport him.
Welcome to Biden’s America! https://t.co/lHrE0cdhgO
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) February 3, 2022
This soft-on-crime approach continued after Pando’s most recent arrest for vandalizing Union Station because, as The Examiner noted, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not attempt to take him into federal custody after his Union Station arrest so that he could face deportation proceedings in court.” Instead, Pando will be allowed to stay in the United States as a result of the guidelines set by the Biden administration:
ICE did not pursue taking Pando into custody following his arrests in Washington last month, an indication of how Biden administration policies have forbidden the law enforcement agency from carrying out laws passed by Congress that give ICE authority to arrest any illegal immigrant, including those without criminal histories.
Earlier, Jeff Timmer of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project attempted to falsely blame the Republican Party for this bigoted graffiti. He tweeted:
This is what Trump has emboldened and what the craven GOP has allowed to fester. This is not only racist/anti-semitic, it’s a partisan declaration. https://t.co/lvFT4ZaQ4O
— Jeff Timmer (@jefftimmer) January 28, 2022
