Last month there was another series of funerals on Long Island New York for teenagers who have become the victim of the quiet gang violence gripping this nation under the radar of the most of mainstream news media obsessed instead with the latest political party rhetoric. The New York Daily News reports in one small town there is now up to 10 victims of this wave of terror at the hands of the international drug gangs.
A few weeks later, one would be hard pressed to find more than a few references to these murders in the “mainstream” national media. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, “Heroin-related overdose deaths have more than quadrupled since 2010. From 2014 to 2015, heroin overdose death rates increased by 20.6 [percent], with nearly 13,000 people dying in 2015.” The report further states, “In particular, heroin use has more than doubled in the past decade among young adults aged 18 to 25 years.”
{mosads}In a previous column in The Hill, I asked if U.S. drug policy had continued to ignore the illicit drug traffic, provide tacit approval to the drug trafficker, and fester the continued brutality of the illegal drug gangs that threaten our youth.
In a recent Fox News report “A firsthand look at how MS-13 terrorizes Suffolk County,” which gained the attention of EBL News, a police officer said, “Now with the new administration, with Trump supporting us and the Attorney General Sessions supporting us, now we have the opportunity, it seems, to take these guys into custody and get them out.”
While these gangs, comprised in part of illegal immigrants, continue to prey on our high school teenagers, Politico reported, “In New York’s broadest response yet to President Donald Trump’s early weeks in office, Democrats who dominate the state assembly passed a bill…that would make New York a “sanctuary state,” and members are poised to again pass legislation that would open tuition assistance programs to undocumented students.”
With this clear example of some politician’s version of “obstruct and resist,” are our elected officials representing the concern of their constituents whose children are preyed upon by drug traffickers and illegal immigrant gang members?
Some of the motivations behind such magnanimous theater were questioned in another previous column in The Hill titled, “Who really benefits from immigration reform?” How have we allowed our politicians to become so fanatically faithful to their political party’s gospel that they will ignore the effects on the children of their constituents?
The Pew Research Center estimates 6 percent of the population in California, 3.9 percent of the population in New York are illegal immigrants. If the government was to deport these, would the state of California lose 6 percent of their representatives in Congress, would New York loose 3.9 percent of their representatives in Congress?
Would they also loose a similar amount of votes in the Electoral College? How would these losses affect the influence of the so called “sanctuary cities” in national politics? Can this be yet another motivation behind the professed altruism of the “sanctuary cities?”
Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing on the worldwide threats. While the witnesses stressed the threat to our nation to include the threat to our youth from international drug trafficking and international narco-terrorism, some of the member of the committee continued to ignore the information about the threat to their constituents and instead chose to demonstrate rabid devotion to their political party talking points.
The mainstream media headlines continue to divert national attention by prioritizing the war of hypocrisy between the political parties’ “Knight of the Woeful Countenance” chasing windmills in their theater of the absurd.
Can it be that some politicians do not perceive the fear gripping our communities? Can it be that our politicians are so flippant regarding the continuous threats that confront the youth of their constituents daily in their school, in their neighborhoods…in their homes?
Can it be that the media is trying to divert attention away from the drug and associated violence threat to our teenagers at the hands of the illegal immigrants in these domestic gangs with international tentacles? Is the pledge to “obstruct and resist” in the best interest of their constituent’s children?
Calvin Coolidge said, “We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of our society and government will fail unless America be kept American.” However, isn’t it clear that some of our politicians have become more interested in the preservation of these illegal immigrant numbers to bolster their own political party influence than the safety and welfare of their constituent’s children in our America?
But in the grand scheme of one-upmanship in the party conflicts that has paralyzed our government, to quote a famous congressional witness, “what difference does it make” to the political party. After all, how much campaign contributions did these teens make at the latest political party fundraiser? There are probably no opportunities for political campaign contributions to be had at these funerals.
John M. DeMaggio is a retired special agent in charge and served as a captain in the U.S. Navy. The above is the opinion of the author and is not meant to reflect the opinion of the U.S. Navy or the U.S. government.
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