20/20 mind-sight

If you haven’t read the FBIs 10 Most Wanted List lately, you’ll see this name on it: Rafael Resendez-Ramirez.

Mr. Resendez-Ramirez is suspected by the feds of being a serial killer, with eight kills to his credit. Putting a wicked twist on the hobo angle, he’s thought to scoot around by hopping railroad cars.

A hobo is no match for the FBI, who was hot on his trail…until he fell into the hands of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS snagged him for being in the United States Illegally.

It then deported him to Mexico.

He has since allegedly returned to the U.S. and is thought to have committed four of the eight murders he’s wanted for.

Mr. R-R has supposedly been crossing the border–illegally–for over twenty years.

No doubt about it: the INS doesn’t look good in this incident.

Instead of pointing the finger at the INS and accusing them of being boneheads, why not consider what they’d be saying about the CNMI if we dropped the ball in such an egregious manner. Indeed, can you imagine the howling we’d hear if the CNMI botched something like that? It would echo off of the moon and shake the coconuts loose from the trees. 20/20 would be here reporting on….
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“Saipan, a Paradise for Alien Murderers.”

Grainy, night time TV images of alleys in Chalan Kanoa are shown….

Voice over: “Death lurks in the shadows of this island, where immigration authorities have released a murderer into the community so he can kill again.”

(Sad, dreamy, spooky, haunting background music–piano and violins–plays in the background.)

(Interview with a pedestrian.) Reporter: “Are you scared of having an eight inch butcher knife sunk between your ribs until you bleed to death on the concrete like a stuck pig?”

Pedestrian: “Uh..yes.”

Reporter: “Aha! I thought so. By the way, you’re a cute one, perhaps a veritable magnet for a lust-crazed serial killer. What is your name and address, ma’am?”

Pedestrian: “None of your business, you creep.”

Voice over: “As you can see, the community is gripped with fear, a victim of the very government that is tasked with protecting it. This pedestrian did not give her name or any details about herself, obviously for fear of reprisals from the government.”

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That’s about how they’d play it, don’t you think? Of course.

The INS has a tough job, no doubt about it, patrolling thousands of miles of border, most of which is in rugged and inhospitable terrain. The authorities here have their own challenges, too, namely navigating a number of cross cultural currents in an environment where merely pronouncing the names of immigrants is enough to drive a man bonkers.

I have faith that the FBI will catch its man–justice will eventually be done. The INS will continue to do the best that it can do, too. Nobody expects absolute perfection in such matters– nobody, that is, except the glib slicksters on television, who point to Saipan as the original sin of all things immigration related.