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.
The initial reaction from authorities was underwhelming amid an already spiking crime crisis at the beginning of 2022. D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department suggested the anti-semitic graffiti was the work of a mentally ill homeless person — a potentially believably theory given Union Station's surrounding grounds have been filled to nearly overflowing with homeless encampments — while Amtrak, the entity that owns Union Station, brushed the swastikas aside as "property damage" rather than a hate crime.
Sure, he just likes to draw things on public buildings like #UnionStation and it has nothing to do with hating Jews
— Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) January 28, 2022
Nothing to see here folks, it's just "property damage," let's move along #AntiSemitism #Judeophobia https://t.co/qyA1tlJsY4
Then last week, authorities tracked down the individual they believed to be responsible for the swastikas and arrested 34-year-old Mexican citizen Geraldo Pando. His arrest record was obtained by The Washington Examiner which reported 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.
According to The Examiner, "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 able to scribble 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."
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.
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) February 3, 2022
Welcome to Biden’s America! https://t.co/lHrE0cdhgO
The trend of leniency continued after Pando's most recent arrest for defacing Union Station because, as The Examiner reported, "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.
Needless to say, any attempt to spin a narrative blaming conservatives for the disgusting graffiti on conservatives is well and truly busted. That of course didn't stop the geniuses who work for The Lincoln Project from jumping to hasty and entirely false conclusions, as my RedState colleague Bonchie highlights here.
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
And despite a pile of initial stories mainstream outlets on the disgusting vandalism, and rightfully so, it seems unlikely that the major networks and mainstream media will be doing follow-up pieces on the suspect's identity and reams of prior crimes, not to mention his previous deportations or the Biden administration's decision to continue allowing this criminal to stay in the United States.