How to Read an ICE Press Release — Repeated Enforcement Failures Ignored

By David North on May 22, 2015

The headline this ICE press release sounds like another triumph for law enforcement:
 

"ICE removes man wanted by Romanian authorities for attempted murder"

 


But a careful reader will find that it took three law-breaking events, the passage of five years, and one misguided government act — freeing him on "an order of recognizance" — before he was finally turned over to the Romanian cops.

Both the needlessly uplifting press release and the series of enforcement failures are all too common, and this is just the most recent example.

The story starts — all according to the release — in 2010 near Douglas, Ariz., where Alin Tomescu was apprehended "when he tried to enter the United States without inspection."

Well, it turned out that ultimately he succeeded in entering the country without inspection. The Border Patrol at first detained him, then some official released him. Then four years later, in 2014, in the Washington metropolitan area, he was arrested two times on theft charges. (The Baltimore Sun reported on September 23, 2014, that he was arrested for trying to obtain money illicitly from an ATM.) Meanwhile Interpol had issued a Red Notice that he was wanted in Romania for attempted murder.

Because of the confluence of events, and because some sharp-eyed cop found that Tomescu was both in custody and wanted by Interpol, he was escorted by ICE officers on a (one hopes) one-way trip back to Romania. The release does not specify either the officer or the agency that put these pieces together. Perhaps it was a local policeman.

The careful reader of the release will find that neither of the apparently nasty terms "deport" or "deportation" is used in the text. An alien is "removed".

And a careful reader of the short Sun article will notice that neither his illegal nor alien status is mentioned; he is described as a resident "of the 2800 block of Orleans Street in Baltimore." All too often newspapers fail to describe illegal alien criminals as illegals.