Michael Goodwin: Colorado attack proves America needs some common sense on immigration

New York Post

04-06-2025

During a long-ago spate of police misconduct issues, then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly noted with dismay that some of the accused had only recently joined the police force.
'It's frustrating,' Kelly told me at the time, 'because we try very hard not to recruit our problems.'
It's a common-sense principle that America has lost sight of when it comes to immigration.
From antisemitism to street crime, the nation is bedeviled by an explosion of violence and hate. Even a cursory review reveals that a significant portion of the wrongdoing is being committed by immigrants, most of them here illegally, thanks to Joe Biden's insane open border policy.
Turning on America
A key distinction involves the leaders of the pro-Hamas campus turmoil. Many are foreign students from Muslim nations legally admitted on student visas, only to turn on America and Israel once they got here
by supporting a terrorist organization.
The result is that in both street crime and antisemitism, we have been importing far too many of our problems.
The two streams came together in the heinous attack in Boulder, Colo., where Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, was charged with throwing firebombs at people marching in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Twelve people were injured, some with serious burns.
Soliman and his family were living in the US illegally — a fact most media accounts didn't mention.
Boulder County Sheriff's Office/AFP via Getty Images
Witnesses said Soliman was shouting 'Free Palestine' as he threw Molotov cocktails, and he later said he aimed to 'kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,' according to the FBI.
Reports say he was planning the attack for a year and told officials he would do the same thing again if given the chance.
Soliman and his family were living in the US illegally — a fact most media accounts didn't mention. He arrived in August 2022 on a B2 visa, which is granted for tourism and family visits.
It expired in February 2023, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which said he then applied for asylum, and got work authorization permits that also had expired.
His wife and five children were taken into custody by ICE officials, and Fox News reported Tuesday they are being fast-tracked for deportation.
None of this is to suggest all immigrants are likely to commit violent crimes.
Rather, the recent pattern points up the need for serious vetting of immigrants before they are admitted.
It also means there must be continued monitoring of their conduct, lest they violate the conditions of their stay and victimize Americans.
Our nation doesn't need them because millions of people around the world who play by the rules and wait their turn to enter are almost certain to contribute more to America. They will be better citizenship candidates than those who simply walked across the border and made a phony claim of asylum.
Common sense
For most of our history, those were regarded as common-sense standards that were supported by both political parties, and most people were proud to call America a nation of immigrants.
But as trust in the federal government declined and leftist ideologues rewrote history to declare the US a hotbed of racism and xenophobia, the government backed off enforcement.
Biden was the absolute worst. His decision to let in as many as 15 million people without vetting is already proving to be one of the biggest, enduring mistakes any president ever made.
The good news is the open border was a top reason Donald Trump was elected. Although his abrupt moves with tariffs have diminished public confidence in his handling of the economy, the president remains in solid positive territory among voters for his hard-line approach to illegal immigration.
For good reason — he managed to virtually seal the border, as he said he would, and is trying to keep his promise to deport criminal aliens.
Similarly, his aggressive moves against Harvard, Columbia and other elite colleges over the rampant harassment and intimidation of Jewish students aims to force the schools to fulfill their obligations under civil rights laws while also deporting foreign students who violate the terms of their visas.
Naturally, Democrats oppose all this.
Not a single congressional Democrat objected to Biden's unprecedented decision to leave the border open for the better part of four years, nor did blue state mayors and governors demand that he shut it.
The invasion remains an economic and social disaster that cost the federal government, states and cities untold billions of dollars, a bleeding that hasn't ended yet.
New York City alone spent at least $5 billion to house and feed more than 200,000 people who showed up uninvited, and a significant number have been arrested for shoplifting, robbery and other crimes.
Around the nation, some who came during the Biden madness have been convicted of notorious murders while others have been arrested on human trafficking, gang and narcotics charges.
Although studies of previous immigrants show they commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans, the vast numbers Biden allowed in dwarf any other four-year span in our history.
Consider that over 50 years, from 1880 to 1930, some 27 million people legally migrated to the United States in what has been called the largest migration in human history.
On an annual basis, the illegals came in far greater numbers under Biden and present a continuing potential source of trouble.
If even 10% of the 15 million commit just one crime a year, that's an additional 1.5 million crimes annually.
Against that backdrop, it is absolutely bizarre that so many Dems have made a top priority of letting foreign troublemakers stay in the United States. Whether it's a criminal gang member or a student leading riots, they effectively take the position that nobody should be deported without a due process system that can drag on for years.
Many gang members
Never mind that some are hardened gang members, drug dealers, human traffickers and mental patients who were kicked out of their home countries and prisons and sent to America.
Naturally, the leftist media also opposes anything Trump does, including his effort to deport criminal aliens.
The Colorado case seems to have provoked handwringing in many newsrooms, to judge by hair-splitting accounts about whether the suspect was here legally.
Trump had no doubts, posting on social media that Sunday's attack was 'yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland.'
Like him or not, he's absolutely right.