Profiling is bad for whom?

Recently, Bill O’Reilly had two guests on his show. One was a fifteen year old Hispanic girl, and the other was her lawyer. They were very upset at America. We had wronged the girl and her family and they were on national television to explain just how we had done so.

It seems the girl was traveling near Barstow CA with her mother. A border patrol officer pulled them over and found the mother to be in the country illegally. The mother was deported.

What was the grave injustice? Was the mother beaten? Abused? Manhandled? Treated unfairly in any way? Not afforded her ‘rights’?

The injustice done to this poor unfortunate woman that drove the girl to seek representation by an attorney was two-fold, as explained by the attorney, Mr. Castillo. He held up a map and showed us with his right finger where Barstow is on a map. He kept repeating over and over how the border patrol was up there instead of being at the border where they belonged, catching drug smugglers. The second offense was that they dared to profile.

According to the lawyer, they would pull up beside a car and if they saw Hispanic occupants, they would pull them over and ask politely to see identification, in order to find illegal immigrants.

The horror! How dare they offend someone in such a cold, callous manner.

So here we had a woman who was knowingly and willfully breaking the law, a criminal on the run hiding from law enforcement, with her daughter, and they are pulled over by the border patrol. When the woman is found to be committing a crime, she was sent back to her country where she is a citizen, according to our laws (and the laws of her country as well).

On a side note, I wonder how the girl became an American citizen. Could it have been that her mother snuck across the border in order to give birth in America, making her baby an immediate citizen? That happens countless times each year, and remains a law that should be rescinded or altered. It’s long past time that the law should state that a child should have the exact same citizenship at birth as her mother.

Back to the story. Attorney Castillo was upset, repeating over and over how the border patrol was up near Barstow and Las Vegas, implying their jurisdiction was only at the borders. Mr. O’Reilly called him on this but did not pursue it, because Castillo simply began harping on his other point. How dare the border patrol look in passing cars and only pull over Hispanics when searching for illegal immigrants in California.

I am sure that all those pesky Norwegians who have snuck into California over the years are breathing a sigh of relief over the actions of the border patrol. Ditto for all the Japanese who slip across the American border from Mexico each night.

When did profiling become a dirty word? It used to mean the authorities were doing their job. There was a television show on a few years ago called Profiler, about an FBI agent who excelled at her job of analyzing data and figuring out who they should be looking for. I would venture to say the show could never be made today, if only because of the name. Lefties would have a fit.

Profiling saves time, money and effort. It results in criminals being caught earlier. It results in more criminals being caught. It results in a safer society for us all. So when the criminals and those who support them go on TV proclaiming it to be a bad thing, where is the laughter? Because the notion that it’s wrong to be looking harder at Hispanics for illegal immigrants in California is just plain silly. It’s on par with the idea that terrorist sympathizers can act indignant about authorities checking credentials of three young men of Middle Eastern descent. No, they would rather we waste time and resources checking the baggage of the elderly grandmother from Nebraska.

Assume a bank is robbed. People in the bank give a description to police that the robbers were four young black males. The police set up a roadblock, and two vehicles approach it. In one car is one white female in her late fifties. In the other car are four black males in their early twenties. Answer honestly – which car should the police check? You see? Profiling isn’t so hard.

The story boils down to this. A woman was in this country committing a crime willfully and intentionally. She was caught and was punished accordingly. Her punishment amounted to being sent back to her home. She was not mishandled in any way, nor was she incarcerated. Her daughter then hired an attorney for unknown reasons and the two of them began a campaign to smear America.

They should have been laughed off the show. This is not Bizarro World, where up is down, left is right, and it’s wrong to narrow your search for criminals by approved methods simply because they work.