{"id":22671,"date":"2020-03-24T10:11:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T14:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22671"},"modified":"2020-03-27T13:43:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T17:43:50","slug":"criminal-aliens-courts-media-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/03\/24\/criminal-aliens-courts-media-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"The Not So Fuzzy Case of Laura Woolen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just when you think reporting on immigration can\u2019t get any worse, it does. The Mercury News<\/a><\/em> \u2013 which covers the San Francisco Bay area \u2013 recently published an article decrying the allegedly sad situation faced by Laura Woolen. Ms. Woolen is a Mexican national who was convicted on two counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor. She now faces deportation to her native country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Articles trying to make martyrs<\/a> out of foreign criminals have become common fare<\/a> lately. However, when it portrays Ms. Woolen as the victim of cruel and callous immigration policies, The Mercury<\/em> is really pushing it. What\u2019s worse, The Mercury<\/em> appears to be taking its cues from the California Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1996, Woolen was working as a nanny in\nOrinda, California. She was accused of molesting an eight-year-old girl for\nwhom she was caring. Facing up to ten years in prison if convicted, Woolen\nagreed to enter into a plea agreement in exchange for a sentence of 120 days\nhouse arrest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to The\nMercury News<\/em>, Woolen was a lawful permanent resident at the time of her\nconviction. Nevertheless, following her plea deal, the U.S. Immigration and\nNaturalization Service (INS) failed to take her into custody. (INS was the\nforerunner to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolen then proceeded to leave and re-enter the\nUnited States, despite remaining subject to arrest and deportation\/exclusion.\nIn 2013, she was finally arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, while\nattempting to re-enter the United States, and placed in deportation\nproceedings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with certain expulsion, Woolen filed a late appeal of her conviction. The California Court of Appeal affirmed that conviction. However, it did so in atypically apologetic language<\/a>, indicating that it was \u201cnot unsympathetic\u201d to Woolen\u2019s plight and expressing \u201creluctance\u201d about its decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When commenting on this matter, neither The Mercury<\/em> nor the Appellate Court\nbothered even considering the proposition \u2013 which the trial court found\npersuasive \u2013 that Woolen molested a child and received her just desserts at the\nhand of the criminal justice system. They immediately jumped to the conclusion\nthat because Woolen was a migrant working as a nanny, there\u2019s no way she was\ntreated fairly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, curiously absent from both the Mercury<\/em>\u2019s coverage of this case, and the\nCourt of Appeal\u2019s review of it, is any input from the victim of Woolen\u2019s crime\nor the child\u2019s family. Similarly, there is no commentary from prosecutors \u2013 who\nobviously uncovered evidence sufficient to secure a conviction against Woolen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what\u2019s really going on here? Both the commentary on this matter by The Mercury News<\/em> and the consideration of it by the California Court of Appeals are part of a disturbing trend<\/a> in our national immigration debate. Open-borders advocates have taken it upon themselves to portray immigrants as smarter, more capable and harder working than native-born U.S. citizens. But whenever a migrant proves to be dishonest<\/a> or criminal<\/a>, they immediately revert to cartoonish portrayals of all immigrants as victims of \u201cracism,\u201d woefully bereft of any responsibility for their own fate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That approach is as distasteful as it is hypocritical. And it doesn\u2019t stand up to any factual analysis of this matter. The reality is that Laura Woolen received more than due process<\/a> at every stage of her alleged saga of woe. And she made conscious choices about how to proceed. In the end, Ms. Woolen isn\u2019t a victim. She\u2019s simply one more person in the American justice system who doesn\u2019t wish to come face-to-face with the consequences of their choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, when it comes to cases like Ms.\nWoolen\u2019s, neither the mainstream media, nor the activist courts in states like\nCalifornia, can see the forest for the trees. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when you think reporting on immigration can\u2019t get any worse, it does. The Mercury News \u2013 which covers the San Francisco Bay area \u2013 recently published an article decrying the allegedly sad situation faced by Laura Woolen. Ms. Woolen is a Mexican national who was convicted on two counts of lewd and lascivious acts<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":12918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[100,1524,1735,275],"yst_prominent_words":[2638,8069,8073,2323,2249,2390,2505,1963,5455,8070,8072,8071,2003,1945,1939,1933,5619,8068,3996,8067],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22708,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22671\/revisions\/22708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22671"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}