By Ben Johnson

The Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a shining city on a hill, a beacon of righteousness to attract other nations to trust and follow the Lord. But increasingly, America serves as another sort of example: proof of God’s judgment on the unrighteous. Specific promises of divine wrath seem confirmed by the daily headlines — and I should know, because I write them — especially on the topic of illegal immigration.

Although underreported by the legacy media, a series of heartrending crime stories have catapulted immigration into the top three election issues that matter to voters in America’s seven swing states. Americans felt joled watching videos of heavily armed illegal aliens reportedly affiliated with a Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) rampaging through suburban Denver apartment buildings and claiming them as their own turf.

The buildings’ residents are largely illegal immigrants who are “afraid to speak out, because the gang was running the place,” Jennie Taer, Texas reporter of the New York Post, told Craig Higbie on Newsmax last Thursday. Others report that residents lived in fear of “Mexicans” shaking them down for extortion money. Residents who speak fluent English have also made videos demonstrating how they have to barricade themselves behind locks and door props, “so no one can kick in the door.”

A protest on Tuesday — held by a left-wing group funded, in part, by the city of Denver — claimed dubiously that there are “no gangs here.” Instead, they said, the real problem is the landlord, CBZ Management, which says it abandoned one of its properties under threat from TdA. But last month local police arrested four members of TdA, which has been tied to more than 100 crimes nationwide, according to the New York Post.

The story, though shocking, is one tile in the mosaic of illegal immigrant crime plaguing the United States thanks to the current administration’s malign neglect. Other, perhaps more concerning, stories have received light media coverage:

Illegal immigrants try to board school buses in San Diego: Parents felt petrified as they learned mobs of illegal immigrants tried to block a bus carrying children to school, and another group of illegal immigrants tried to get on the bus with children in two separate events last week. Last Tuesday, a busload of students in the Jamul-Dulzura Union School District had to swerve around three illegal immigrants who tried to stop the vehicle in the middle of Highway 94 — a common tactic in highway ambushes. The next day, August 28, a group of 20 illegal immigrants tried to get on board a bus of school children at the same bus stop.

“Illegals are now trying to force their way onto our kids’ school buses,” lamented Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.). But the San Diego Sheriff’s Office concluded the gangs of roaming illegals had broken no law, since they did not use physical force.

Rather than arrest threatening adults, the school district announced from now on, drivers will drive past bus stops where illegal immigrants are present, essentially stranding American children with large groups of foreign adults.

House Republicans investigate illegal immigrant who raped teenage girl, slashed an adult: In October 2023, Border Patrol agents stopped Angel Matias Castellanos-Orellana, a 19-year-old Honduran national, illegally crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas. The Biden-Harris administration released him into the country due to “lack of space,” although DHS data showed it “had the capacity to detain” him, reported the House Judiciary Committee as part of a new investigation this week. Despite the fact that he claimed to have no credible fear of being returned to his native country, “Castellanos-Orellana was released with a Notice to Appear in immigration court on an ‘Order of Release on own Recognizance’ due to a ‘lack of space,’ with instructions to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in New Orleans.” In February, police arrested him for raping and assaulting a 14-year-old girl, as well as repeatedly stabbing a man during a robbery, in Kenner, Louisiana.

“The Biden-Harris border crisis is terrorizing American communities,” said the House Judiciary Committee.

Another illegal immigrant stabs 14-year-old girl: On Sunday, police arrested Dimas Gabriel Yanez, a 26-year-old illegal immigrant, after he stabbed a 14-year-old girl with a butcher knife, then tried to stab her mother. The assault took place during America’s pastime: a baseball game in Lowell, Indiana (population 11,128). Yanez had been deported to his native Honduras in 2018.

Haitian raped a young boy: On Wednesday, police arrested 18-year-old Haitian migrant Akim Marc Desire for raping a boy under the age of 14. Officials say the Biden-Harris administration flew the perpetrator into the U.S. as part of its Advance Travel Authorizations program last June, but Desire subsequently violated his parole. 

Three out of four criminals arrested in NYC neighborhood are illegals: “Police sources shared with The Post a staggering estimate that as many as 75% of the people they’ve been arresting in Midtown Manhattan in recent months for crimes like assault, robbery and domestic violence are migrant,” reported the New York Post on Monday. “In parts of Queens, the figure is more than 60%, sources there estimate.”

Criminal illegals go from prison back to U.S. streets: The state of Florida has sued the Biden-Harris administration for releasing criminal aliens from prisons onto U.S. streets. The lawsuit came as Attorney General Ashley Moody ® accused the administration of “unlawfully withholding records” after stonewalling the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in March. While it has been longstanding practice to jail illegal immigrants convicted of harming U.S. citizens in American prisons, “everyone has always assumed — in both Democrat and Republican Administrations — that such aliens would be deported the moment they finished their criminal sentence,” said Moody. “For the first time in history, however, the Biden-Harris Administration has abandoned that practice.” Under Kamala Harris’s policy, “the decision to bring a criminal to the United States for prosecution results in a benefit to that alien in the form of the right to permanently remain in the United States.”

The spike of criminal alien crimes flows naturally from a southern border deliberately left uncontrolled by the Democratic incumbents as part of an electoral strategy. “The old America was, like, so boring,” quipped prolific libertarian writer Tom Woods, an attempt to laugh through unbearable pain.

Crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants who should never have set foot on U.S. soil impose real costs on U.S. victims, directly and indirectly. Aside from direct victimization, Americans pay a heavy cost for the burden of illegal immigration. Denver residents spent $89.9 million on illegal immigration last year — while cutting government services to U.S. citizens and legal residents, local news outlets reported in April. For instance, the Denver Fire Department slashed its budget by $2.5 million.

U.S. citizens suffer from competition from cheap, illegal labor. Over the last year, native-born Americans lost 1.21 million jobs over the last year, while foreign-born workers gainfully employed in the U.S. economy increased 1.27 million during the same period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Liberals have greeted these stories with overwhelming empathy — for illegal immigrants. Democrats would like to get illegal immigrants out of American apartment buildings — into taxpayer-funded homes filled with other benefits. Consider:

• California Democrats have passed a bill to give up to $150,000 to illegals to buy their first home, as well as zero-interest loans. The bill, AB 1840, would make state residents eligible for “California Dream for All” program regardless of immigration status.
• The state of Michigan also assists non-citizens with rent. Michigan’s Newcomer Rental Subsidy program gives beneficiaries $500 a month for up to a year. The program is open to the large number of people the administration has allowed to enter as “refugees,” a status often gamed by those entering the U.S. under false pretenses.
• New York City gave 3,000 prepaid debit cards to illegal aliens — and only illegal aliens — in the first half of 2024. The program worked so well, the city expanded it (albeit not to U.S. citizens), doling out 7,500 cards worth up to $350 a month. The latest round of handouts cost $2.6 million.
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) forced high school students to go back to COVID-era online classes, while he housed illegal immigrants in a Brooklyn high school gym in January.
• Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) inquired into reports that the Biden-Harris Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) diverted resources intended for military veterans to process the medical claims from illegal immigrants being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last December.
• In its latest report, the House Judiciary Committee referred to a April 2024 report that documented how, under the Biden-Harris administration, “ICE has instructed its officers to first consider irrelevant factors such as an illegal alien’s high blood pressure, diabetes, caregiver status, and other ‘mitigating factors’ before ever arresting a criminal alien” — a courtesy not extended to native-born crooks.

These giveaways act as a golden magnet drawing more illegal immigrants from across the world. One might be forgiven for believing that is their goal. Kamala Harris claimed erroneously in 2017, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” If she has her way, as she declared when she accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris will “create an earned pathway to citizenship,” granting amnesty to unknown tens of millions. The greatest diminution of U.S. citizenship comes when it is allowed to be stolen, repeatedly.

All of this brings us back to the Bible — specifically, Deuteronomy 28. As Moses delivered commandments expressing the wisdom of God, he warned the tribes of Israel that there is — to paraphrase Kamala Harris — a duality to the nature of God’s Law. Obedience brings blessings, but disobedience brings curses.

“It shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you,” Moses told the Israelites (v. 15), followed by 53 verses of plagues. While these curses take numerous forms, since all of creation groans under the yoke of sin (Romans 8:22), the transfer of benefits from native citizens to the “alien” is a recurring motif.

“The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail,” Moses warned (vs. 43-44). The United States went from the world’s greatest creditor nation in 1982 to the world’s largest debtor nation by 1986 (as America’s annual abortions approached record levels) and has never looked back.

Moses continued, saying that “you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you.” Those besieging God’s people will “not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young.And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you. They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you.You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you” (vs. 48, 50-53).

Amidst these warnings, God shows the rewards of obedience:

“If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God … Blessed shall be the fruit of your body … The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. … And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.”

My pastoral side must note that these conditions took place long ago, in the Old Testament. Yet the principle remains that deviation from God’s Word brings death, as it did to Adam and Eve, because it separates us from the Tree of Life, and severed branches cannot bring forth fruit. Only grafting the branches back into the vine allows the life-giving sap to flow through each tendril and maintain life. The United States has separated itself from God’s revealed Word and obedience to the observable laws of the created order. We are reaping a price, of which the illegal immigrant crime wave is but a facet.

The answer to the border crime spree is the same answer to all mankind’s problems: return to Christ. In addition to arresting criminal aliens, deporting illegal aliens, and securing the border, Americans should kneel before Christ and raise up the holy standard of His commandments. Only then will “justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.