The photograph is of a lovely young woman, with a warm smile on her face, a woman who loved and was loved in turn.
Her name was
The last words she said to her father before she died were "Help me, Dad."
So look at that photo. See the promise in her face.
Some are calling her a symbol now of what's wrong with illegal immigration. I'm not so sure. My parents were immigrants.
I grew up in this country desperate to become an American. So immigration isn't some political exercise for me. It's been part of my life.
But so has been my understanding of what binds us together, all of us, so many different people, with our different ethnicities and habits and foods and languages.
It is the belief in the rule of law. And without that, we're nothing.
Making
When you look at the photo, you might want to fix the light of her eyes in your mind. But do it quickly, because
She's being muscled out of the news.
The guilty plea of retired Lt. Gen.
And more allegations of sexual misconduct by political and media elites will get attention.
But before she fades from the news cycle, please consider this.
And that makes her a political problem. That makes her an irritant to Democratic politicians and the open-borders types who use sanctuary city policies to bend immigration law and win Mexican-American votes.
You might not like it, but that's what it is. They defy federal law to satisfy their local politics.
So yes, she's a problem, because it was sanctuary city policy that protected
Zarate had been in local custody on a drug charge. And rather than bow to a detainer request of federal immigration authorities and hold him, Sanctuary San Francisco let
There was a stolen gun in his hand as
He initially told police he'd been shooting at a sea lion.
But if he had killed the sea lion, Zarate would have been convicted of something.
The bullet killed
A charge of murder requires proof of direct intent and there were no witnesses to intent. I've seen it argued that local prosecutors overreached in charging murder in the first degree. I wouldn't disagree.
Yet he also walked on manslaughter charges. And how a man can fire a gun and kill someone and not be convicted of manslaughter? That is beyond me.
I wasn't in that courtroom. Her family was, though. And her father,
"There's no other way you can join it. Justice was rendered, but it was not served," he said.
And justice still isn't being served, as long as sanctuary cities allow local political warlords to buy votes by bending federal law.
The politics of this are smart, and effective, which is why so many big cities with large Mexican populations have adopted sanctuary city policies.
But under the law, immigration is the province of the federal government. And without the law, what are we? A collection of squabbling city-states?
Why do we even have a federal government at all, if only to allow each state, each city and the local warlords to make their own separate immigration policy?
Only the people of a sovereign nation have the right to decide what to do about their own borders. And their will is expressed by
A nation without borders isn't a nation. It's just land that can be grabbed by whoever is tough enough to grab it. And releasing criminals onto the streets to satisfy your political goals isn't policy. It's dangerous.
But all that wasn't on the mind of
"Kate was beautiful, kind, happy, caring, loving and deep in faith,"
"... The day she was killed, we were walking arm in arm on
In America, we say that justice is blind because we know that without justice under the rule of law, we're finished.
What happened to
A bullet took her life. But it was politics that killed her.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.