Rarely do we give victims the help they need or the attention they deserve. Yet the protection of our citizens — to guard them from becoming victims — is the primary purpose of our penal laws. Thus, each new victim personally represents an instance in which our system has failed to prevent crime. Lack of concern for victims compounds that failure.” ~Ronald Reagan, April 8, 1981, proclamation creating National Crime Victims Week.

Gerald Washington, 27, of Houston should be the poster child for criminal justice reform on behalf of victims of crime, but this is the side of the issue that is never discussed by the “reform” movement, which simply does not believe in incarceration.

29-year-old Reginald Larry was on his way to visit his grandmother last week when he stopped off at a corner store in Houston to get a drink. That’s when Houston police say Washington shot and killed him just outside the store with no apparent motive. He remains a fugitive as of this writing.

This could have happened to anyone else in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if we had true criminal justice reform that prioritizes public safety over criminal freedoms, Larry would be alive today.

Washington was already charged with murdering a woman and shooting two others, but he was released on bail. And he had a criminal history and parole violations before that murder, but was still granted bail. Here’s the criminal history, according to ABC13.

Washington was charged for two counts of burglary in 2018 but was given parole rather than prison time.

Despite violating the terms of his parole several times, he was not incarcerated.

On October 5, 2018, according to Harris County court records, Washington was charged with murder and with aggravated assault for shooting two other women. According to ABC13, “One of the victims told ABC13 she was shot so many times that she played dead. She was in the hospital for a month and in rehabilitation for two months. She said she was shot between six or seven times.” One would think someone like this would be held without bond, but he was released on $200,000 bond, which usually means the defendant only pays 10 percent in cash.

A search of Harris County court records also shows a criminal trespassing charge and assault resulting in bodily injury in 2013. He served just 30 days and was given parole. He also spent 45 days in jail in 2016 for evading arrest.

He was wearing an ankle bracelet during this past release on bond, but it evidently did not prevent him from shooting Larry. Police say he has cut off his ankle monitor since the murder last week and remains a fugitive.

It’s a known fact that ankle bracelets simply do not deter violent criminals if they are not incarcerated, and there are too few officers to monitor too many volatile criminals. Yet our entire justice system, along with the weight of dozens of well-funded “criminal justice reform” nonprofits, only have the concerns of people like Gerald Washington in mind with their policies, not people like Reginald Larry.

What this case also demonstrates is that the weak-on-crime judges and policies are not only native to blue states, but are alive and well in states like Texas, particularly in Harris County. In December, a female Houston police officer was allegedly killed by Tavores Dewayne Henderson, a man who openly bragged about avoiding jail time, despite his extensive criminal record in three counties. Then, even after the capital murder charge, he was initially offered $150,000 bond before it was revoked.

Harris County is following in the footsteps of New York by abolishing pretrial jail in most cases. In addition to the problem of releasing dangerous violent criminals, there is further concern from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that such policies will lead to the release of criminal aliens before ICE is able to apprehend them, in contravention to the state’s anti-sanctuary law.

This concern played out in real life when Emilio Duarte-Lone, an illegal alien from Honduras with a deportation order, was arrested for DWI in December, but was released by Harris County without being turned over to ICE. He, of course, failed to show up to his January 24 court hearing and remains a fugitive.

I often hear proponents of jailbreak policies dismiss our concerns of rising crime after 25 years of plummeting crime by suggesting that most of the murders taking place are gang-on-gang violence, as if law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. But career criminals like Gerald Washington don’t necessarily discriminate in choosing their victims. Just ask the family of Reginald Larry. (For more from the author of “Houston Career Criminal Released After Arrest For Murder Now Wanted… For Murder” please click HERE)

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Illegal aliens can break into our country with impunity and sue ICE officers if they don’t like conditions in the detention facilities. But if an ICE agent is killed by cartel assassins on a mission in Mexico on behalf of the United States government, suddenly borders seem to be important.

On February 15, 2011, members of Los Zetas cartel ambushed two ICE HSI agents traveling in Mexico. They murdered Jaime Zapata, but his partner, Victor Avila, managed to survive by remaining locked in the armored vehicle with diplomatic plates until police arrived on the scene. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the second most important federal court, overturned two murder convictions from 2017 for two of the hit men, Jose Emanuel “Zafado” Garcia Sota and Jesus Ivan “Loco” Quezada Pina. They are still serving up to life in prison for the basic murder charge and for a firearms charge, but this decision, unless overturned by the Supreme Court, will give these two cartel members the possibility of parole down the road.

Victor Avila and the parents of Jaime Zapata have been trying to get justice as well as answers from the U.S. government on the nature of the mission that led them into the trap. Zapata’s parents filed a $25 million wrongful death claim against the government, charging that the weapons used against them by the Zetas were part of the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. But that lawsuit, according to Avila, was dismissed in the Southern District of Texas because the federal government did not cooperate by providing the plaintiffs with the documents they needed.

“These families, indeed the American public, are owed the truth about this tragedy and about the circumstances that led to guns going to Mexico — guns that shot two Americans and which may have killed many others,” wrote Judge Hanen in reluctantly dismissing the lawsuit because plaintiffs could not produce enough documents.

I interviewed Avila on my podcast last June in a two-part series (here and here) where he shared the details of the ambush, his quest for elusive justice, and how he has felt let down by our own government both during and after the attack. There’s also a documentary, “Agent Down on Highway 57,” that delves into the questions about the dubious mission they were tasked with, as well as the cover-up after the attack, which was not widely reported in the media at the time.

At issue in the federal appeals court case is whether 18 U.S.C. §1114, which criminalizes the murder of federal agents, applies outside the country. Two other appeals courts, the Second and Eleventh circuits, have ruled in the past that this section is applicable abroad, but the D.C. court ruled that one must presume “that Congress ordinarily legislates with respect to domestic, not foreign, matters.”

Victor Avila, who himself was gravely wounded during the attack, was devastated. “The Zapata family and I are devastated by the appellate court’s decision,” said Avila in a statement to CR. “Other appellate courts have upheld the extraterritorial occurrence in this statute. Why did the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rule this way knowing this precedent exists? What message is being sent to the terrorist cartels in Mexico and around the world? This threatens the safety of our agents in Mexico and abroad. I will do everything I can to have Congress amend the statute and have the Dept. of Justice appeal this egregious decision.”

In total, there were seven individuals extradited for the murder. The other five weren’t even sentenced to mandatory life sentences to begin with because the Justice Department under Obama accepted a plea bargain. Their sentences ranged between 12 years and 35 years. Avilla tells me that the one with the 12-year sentence, Francisco Carbajal Flores, is slated to be released in August 2021.

“It’s unbelievable, this guy’s entire family was brought here on visas and were housed here for the duration of the trial on taxpayer dime. Yet my family had to pay for arrangements to stay in D.C. during the trial, even though I was almost killed by them while serving as a federal agent.”

This court decision leaves a gaping hole in federal law for seeking justice against those who murder federal agents abroad. Last week, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr urging him to appeal this decision.

“The message this ruling sends is one of open season on federal law enforcement officers who can now be targeted overseas,” warns the federal law enforcement association representing 28,000 agents. “Under this ruling, criminals and terrorists will take liberties that targeting a U.S. federal law enforcement officer, will bear no additional punishment, and if apprehended, may never be charged for their death in a United States Court.”

Nothing, of course, is stopping Congress from acting. Why is there never any sense of urgency in Congress to fix judicial loopholes that let off Zetas hit men or criminal aliens in our own country, such as Jose Zarate, Kate Steinle’s killer? Where is the “criminal justice reform” to close these loopholes? (For more from the author of “Life Sentence Overturned for Cartel Members Who Killed ICE Agent” please click HERE)

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The bromide of “America’s immigration system is broken” often rings hollow in its inherent vagueness, but the case of Jorge Avila is a vivid illustration of what President Trump warned is a system that puts America’s security last and takes advantage of the citizen.

In a puff piece by Denverite, Jorge Avila, a 31-year-old illegal alien from Mexico living in Park Hill, Colorado, is portrayed as “a religious man” who “who grew up in the city’s public school system after emigrating from Mexico in 2000,” who is seeking shelter in Park Hill United Methodist Church and Temple Micah to escape the persecution of ICE and immigration courts. The story depicts him as an all-American boy living on the run, with his children terrified of those ICE stormtroopers. In fact, you’d almost think he’s a legal immigrant.

Here’s the reality of why ICE is interested in him. “Mexican citizen Jorge Eduardo Araiza, 31, aka Jorge Araiza Ávila, a member of the Sureno 13 gang, is illegally present in the U.S. and considered a wanted fugitive by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” said Alethea Smock, spokeswoman for ICE’s Denver field office. “Araiza has multiple criminal convictions to include illegal weapons possession, illegal use of slugs, trespassing, among others, spanning several years.”

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2019 Drug Threat Assessment, Sureno 13 gang members “have ties with Mexican cartels and they work together to smuggle methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana.” Texas’ Department of Public safety rates the gang a top threat for “their relationship with cartels, propensity for violence, level of criminal activity, involvement in human smuggling, and recruitment of minors.”

Hence, these churches that are supposed to uphold biblical values are harboring foreign gang members. There is a growing problem of churches harboring criminal aliens under the guise of compassion. Last year, a Colorado Springs church harbored an illegal alien despite his prior conviction for DUI and arrests for reckless endangerment and domestic violence. A few months later, he was accused of killing a father of five when his truck swerved into the man’s motorcycle.

There’s also the public policy aspect of this case as well. One would think that at least an illegal alien who also has a criminal record and is a member of a dangerous gang would be removed immediately upon discovery by federal officials. Yet our broken system allows such people to litigate their cases for a decade, violate the terms of the process, and continue to remain here with impunity while having more children who will get to vote just like you and me, as a reward for their parents violating one law after another.

“Araiza illegally entered the U.S. sometime in 2000 and was initially encountered by officers with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in September 2011 and placed into immigration proceedings,” said Smock on the statement. “He failed to appear for his immigration court hearing in August 2012, and an immigration judge ordered him removed in absentia. He appealed the judge’s decision, and in January 2018, he was granted voluntary departure. Araiza failed to depart and filed a petition for review with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which was denied in January 2020. After exhausting full legal process in his case, Araiza is subject to a final order of removal and must depart the country.”

Commonsense taxpayers might be wondering how we’ve gone from the courts saying for 130 years that there is no right to judicial review for remaining in the country against the national will to a point where illegal aliens have more appeals than you or I would get. Avila now has four young children who, under prevailing administrative procedures, are viewed as American citizens, even though Avila had been affirmatively ordered removed from the country.

In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a law designed to foreclose upon any avenue for litigation by blocking all access to administrative and federal judges for illegal aliens who can’t prove they’ve resided here for two consecutive years. However, the law has not been enforced, allowing millions of criminal aliens to remain here and then litigate their way out of deportation for years thereafter. President Trump is in the process of finally implementing it, but the lower courts are placing injunctions on a law that barred this very sort of judicial intervention in the first place.

This case, in particular, demonstrates a need for immigration reform in which at least those with criminal charges or convictions (in addition to being here illegally) are removed immediately without further review or appeals. Absent such a reform, the citizenry will retain no control over who gets to join the society, the very underpinnings of consent-based society established in the Declaration of Independence.

To put this in its numerical context, there are 3.2 million people who’ve already been targeted for removal, mainly those who’ve committed additional crimes, who remain at large in the country undetained. Of those, 2.1 million have final or pending final removal orders, and the rest are still litigating their way into various kinds of legal status. We know from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) that 83 percent of felons reoffend within nine years of being released. Which means our citizens are needlessly on the hook for recidivist crimes committed by millions of other countries’ criminals who should never have been here to begin with and have no right to judicial review. (For more from the author of “Illegal Alien Gang Member Who Avoided Deportation Seeks Sanctuary in Church” please click HERE)

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