I respectfully disagree with the National Review editors’ comments, following President Trump’s address to Congress, that creation of a new unit in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) focused on the victims of illegal-immigrant crime “would serve no good purpose.” Actually, the office would serve several good purposes that are directly related to immigration policy, politics, and civic morality.
The “Office for Victims of Crimes Committed by Removable Aliens,” now called “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE),” was created by an executive order on immigration enforcement on January 25 and enhanced in a memorandum by DHS secretary John Kelly on February 20. VOICE is a very appropriate name for this office. For years American families victimized by illegal aliens have been ignored. Because of the misuse of “privacy” rules and indifference, they have been unable to find out whether the criminals who attacked their family members were in the country legally or illegally, or even whether the aliens were incarcerated, deported, or set free.
Secretary Kelly’s memo stated that “criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans. . . . Often, these victims are not provided adequate information about the offender, the offender’s immigration status, or any enforcement action taken by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] against the offender . . . leaving victims feeling marginalized and without a voice.” The DHS memo declared that the new office would create a liaison with the victims and provide information including the “offender’s immigration status and custody status.” Funds for VOICE would be reallocated from “resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens,” an Obama initiative, which would be “immediately” terminated. Thus, no major new bureaucracy would be created.
It is to Donald Trump’s credit that he has done what no other presidential candidate, or major American political figure, has ever done, by championing these unfashionable and (for many) inconvenient victims of illegal-immigrant crime (inconvenient because they muddy the dominant media narrative). In contrast to Trump, when the family members of Americans killed by illegal aliens testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the summer of 2015, Senators Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) fled the hearing room and returned only after the families had gone. As Mark Krikorian explained, these Americans are “all dead because federal, state, and local governments have abdicated their responsibility to protect American citizens from foreign criminals.”