Built in the 1930s, the neighborhood was always inhabited by the working poor, but long-time residents say it used to be a nice place to live. Rows of tidy homes lined narrow but clean streets. Children played in well-kept front yards, in alleys, or at the nearby park. Many residents worked at the Van de Kamp factory just blocks away, within easy walking distance. Certainly not utopia, Glassell Park nevertheless served two generations of Angelenos, providing affordable housing and a safe family environment. Today, all that is long gone, according to a Los Angeles Times front page story published on March 30th.
The community is now described as “hands down the worst area of Northeast Division,” in the words of one LAPD officer. Gang infestation has made the once peaceful streets nearly unlivable. “We don’t let kids play in the front,” said one resident who did not want to be identified. “The drug dealers are so common they’re part of the scenery. We’re barely surviving here.” Gangs control the neighborhood, so much so that police have trouble finding witnesses to even the most heinous crimes. “It’s been a safety net for them to rely on each other — brothers, cousins and all,” said an LAPD Lieutenant. ”The likelihood of someone within your family ratting you out is really low.” Gunfire is a common occurrence, especially on weekends, and law-abiding residents claim they feel imprisoned in their own homes.
The neighborhood began to change in the 1970s as thousands of Mexicans fled their home city of Tlalchapa in Mexico’s Guerrero State. Driven out by poverty and, ironically, drug-fueled violence, the first immigrants arriving in the Los Angeles area settled peacefully and gained employment with the local manufacturing companies. In a practice that continues to this day, word of the better life north of the border filtered back to friends and relatives in Mexico, and the immigration trickle became a flood. Tragically, the violent gang culture of Guerrero also migrated north, and by the late 1980s the original wave of Mexican immigrants began to leave Glassell Park. “We created a little Guerrero up there,” said a Tlalchapa immigrant who “left [Glassell Park] when it got bad.”
The poster-person highlighting the problems with American immigration policy is Maria “Chata” Leon, a Glassell Park resident since 1985. “An illegal immigrant and mother of 13, Leon has a lengthy arrest record and three convictions for drug-related crimes — for which she’s served no prison time,” reported the Times. According to court records obtained by the Times, Leon has been arrested at least 14 times and in 2003 was deemed a “deportable alien,” but she was apparently never deported. Several of Leon’s sons, fathered by one of five men, are “documented gang members…One of Leon’s sons, Daniel, was killed last month in a shoot-out…after allegedly firing an AK-47 at officers…An older son, Jose Leon, pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for sale…and was sentenced to four years in jail.” Leon and her family now reside in a new sub-division in Victorville, California.
The foregoing is just a small part of a huge tapestry blanketing much of the American southwest. Criminal illegal aliens ravage neighborhoods almost at will. When they are caught, deportation either doesn’t occur or the deported thug simply walks back into America. Now, Riverside County authorities are teaming up with U.S. attorneys “to prosecute gang members who have already been convicted of a violent crime and deported and have returned illegally to the United States,” according to a February story in the Press-Enterprise. This effort has served primarily to alert law-abiding Americans to the danger in our midst. The details are scary.
The largest gang operating in America is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, “identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the most dangerous gang in the United States. It has an estimated 100,000 members worldwide, and 90 percent of the gang’s members in the United States are here illegally,” according to Riverside County DA Rod Pacheco. “They are extremely violent,” said Peter Cagney, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor. “Experts think it is because a lot of the members originally came from El Salvador” during its bloody civil war in the 1980s, reported the Press-Enterprise.
Deporting these predators would be a good idea if it wasn’t so easy for them to return. In the dragnet currently deployed to catch previously deported criminal aliens, “One…man was found serving time in a Norco prison who had been deported 10 times between 1990 and 2006.” Such nonsense, occurring at great taxpayer expense, is precisely why many conservatives have been screaming that the first step in dealing with illegal immigration is to close the southern border. With the border open as it is now, the only remaining alternatives are to warehouse hoodlums in prisons or let them terrorize once-peaceful neighborhoods like Glassell Park. The obvious solution, permanent deportation, seems politically impossible.
Trying to salvage some sense of decency for Glassell Park residents, the city of Los Angeles in 2002 built Juntos Park, at a cost of $6 million. A nice try, but the park “has since become another spot for drug dealing,” said the Times. Undaunted, “last year the city installed surveillance cameras without bulletproof glass. Gang members shot them out the first night,” prompting LA Councilman Eric Garcetti to quip, “Now we have to put in cameras to monitor the installation of cameras.” I think he was kidding, but you never know.
Illegal immigration is a monumental threat to America, financially and culturally. As reported in yesterday’s post, Arizona has implemented a successful plan to remove aliens from its borders, but nothing prevents illegal immigrants leaving one state to set up shop in another. Indeed, the dislocated Arizona aliens are heading to New Mexico. A workable solution for the nation can only be accomplished with the federal government’s full-hearted participation, closing the border, deporting criminal aliens, and encouraging law-abiding aliens to return home by harshly penalizing American companies employing aliens. Employment opportunities draw illegal immigrants; a lack of jobs will convince many to return home. All that is required is a sane immigration policy emanating from Washington DC. Maybe next year.
Maria Leon’s 13 children were born in the United States. The Times story did not mention whether she or her children were receiving government assistance.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Illegal Immigration