On January 28, 34-year-old Geraldo Pando was arrested and charged with drawing swastikas on the exterior walls of Union Station in Washington, D.C., only one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Initially, the matter drew significant media attention, as well as a great deal of speculation about who exactly the perp was and what his motives were.
Eventually, thanks to reporting by the Washington Examiner, Americans learned that the Nazi-symbol-scrawling vandal was a Mexican national illegally present in the U.S. who had been deported twice. This fact apparently caused much of the mainstream media to lose interest in the story, as very few outlets have reported on Pando being caught, and fewer still detailed his immigration status. And, despite his long and disturbing 16-year criminal history, Pando was not picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In fact, it appears that, due to the Biden administration’s pro-illegal-alien, anti-deportation policies, he will get to stay in the country.
The Mexican national’s rap sheet is 35 pages long and begins in Aurora, Colorado, in February 2006 with an arrest and charges for driving without a license and insurance, felony drug possession, and possession of drug paraphernalia and marijuana. He was rearrested in 2007 for violating his probation.
In addition, between April 2016 and October 2020, after illegally re-entering the country, he was arrested multiple times in Aurora on charges ranging from burglary and theft, possession of a controlled substance, to assaulting a first responder. He spent some time in jail as a result of some of these crimes, but also benefited from soft-on-crime and sanctuary policies to also receive probation or have other charges dismissed. The fact that Aurora became a sanctuary jurisdiction as of November 2016 also ensured that the repeat criminal illegal alien would not be turned over to ICE for deportation.
Sometime in late 2021, Pando seems to have made his way to the Washington, D.C., metro area. Once there, he proved unable to stay out of trouble. As the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli points out, the criminal illegal alien “had also been detained and arrested a week prior to the Union Station incident for vandalizing the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters…. Capitol Police released him because ICE did not ask that he be detained.”
He will almost certainly avoid deportation once again because of the Biden administration’s policies. Specifically, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ immigration priorities guidelines from September 30, 2021, make it extremely hard to deport illegal aliens, thereby essentially abolishing ICE by tying its hands. So far, Pando has apparently not qualified for the Biden administration’s ridiculously high removal bar. The problem, of course, is not just Geraldo Pando, but also many other dangerous – or potentially dangerous – illegal aliens that the administration’s reckless policies are shielding from deportation. Thanks to the Biden administration’s criminal-protecting immigration measures, dangerous and reprehensible individuals like Pando will be permitted to remain in America.