Lefts push to delay deporting illegal-migrant criminals imposes huge costs on taxpayers

Much of today’s deportation debate centers on the question of who should count as “criminals” to be immediately sent back to their home countries — with anti-deportation advocates ignoring the huge cost of delay.Consider a case from Loudoun County, Va., where police arrested Isaac Melendez-Carranza for allegedly selling fentanyl to two students at Park View HS who then OD’d; only Narcan saved their lives.As in high-profile cases from Laken Riley to Sheridan Gorman, this crime is itself an added cost: Melendez-Carranza entered the country illegally and a judge ordered him deported in July 2024 — yet (Biden-era) federal immigration authorities encountered him one month later and let him remain.And many Democrats, immigration advocates and media voices insist it’d be wrong to deport him now, based merely on an arrest or pending charges.The Department of Homeland Security claims that 70% of illegal aliens have been convicted or charged with a crime (beyond the immigration violation); organizations such as the Cato Institute and Brennan Center, focusing instead on criminal convictions in this country, claim that only about 35% of illegals should count as criminals.“A charge is not a conviction,” argues Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Brennan’s senior director for justice; “people are innocent until proven guilty” — again, ignoring the fact that we’re talking about people who’ve already violated US immigration law.These advocates’ counts virtually always also exclude illegal immigrants’ criminal histories from their home countries — though, as DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin notes, “Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”Now consider the costs of prosecution: Even if Melendez-Carranza accepts a plea bargain, prosecuting such a fentanyl-distribution felony typically runs Virgin...