On Wednesday’s RealClearPolitics podcast, Carl Cannon commented on Chicago Alderwoman Maria Hadden’s response to the murder of Sheridan Gorman — a Loyola student reportedly killed by a suspect identified as an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who had previously been arrested for other crimes. “It sounds like this might have been a wrong place, wrong time, running into a person who had a gun,” Alderwoman Hadden said. “They might have startled this person at the end of the pier unintentionally.” “An alderman is a city council member, if you’re not from Chicago,” Cannon explained. “But, there’s no cause for alarm? They may have startled this guy, who had a gun? Just think of that construct for a minute. First of all, an illegal immigrant is not allowed to walk around Chicago with a handgun. No one is!” “Startled him? Like they caused this? He was there with his gun, minding his own business in the middle of the night on a pier? Why are they framing it that way?” “When she says there’s no cause for alarm, what she means to say is there’s not somebody out there just shooting people, I guess. But there is cause for alarm, because this is a public policy question,” he said. “Chicago is a sanctuary city. Illinois is a sanctuary state. That means the Democratic Party has officially decided and decreed that they will not cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration law.” “So then, when someone in the country illegally commits a crime like this, yes, there is cause for alarm. The cause for alarm is: Is our policy working?” “That’s what you’d expect from a responsible, decent public official. What you would not expect-and what you get time after time-is to minimize it,” Cannon said. “The Chicago Sun-Times quoted some fake study that’s been debunked, saying immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans. There’s no way to do a study on that.” “This guy comes into this country illegally, he’s given a summons to appear on August 33, 2038, to an immigration officer or whatever. And then he’s immediately picked up for a crime-shoplifting. That’s when the system, the law enforcement system, should say, Wait, is this somebody we want here?” “But that’s not the Democratic Party’s policies now,” Cannon said. “They’ve boxed themselves into this corner. And because of their unwillingness to reflect on this and reexamine their policies and talk about it in a normal way, they lash out at the victims. It is unsustainable.” “This is the oldest political party in the world’s oldest democracy. Is this really your policy-that when something does not go the way you’d like it to go, you go out and blame the victim? An 18-year-old woman, a freshman in college, murdered?”
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