While we’re looking at polling trends and hoping for a good result next Tuesday, it’s important to remember some of the reasons we’re voting. And here’s one: Fernando Andres Jimenez Meza. Meza is 40 years old, a Chilean national, he has been charged with the murder of a New York teenager as well as the shooting of the teen’s brother and mother – and he was in the United States illegally.
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This is another death that should not have happened.
The Chilean national charged with shooting his upstate girlfriend and her two teen sons — killing one of the boys — is an illegal immigrant who snuck back into the US after being deported, federal sources told The Post Thursday.
Fernando Andres Jimenez Meza, 40, was deported 20 years ago after being nabbed at the US border in California, but was back in the country Monday when he allegedly shot his girlfriend Christina Raimondi and her two sons in a townhouse on Route 6 in Somers.
The shooting sparked a massive manhunt that ended when he was nabbed in Putnam County.
There’s a timeline to consider here. Meza had been deported once, during the term of George W. Bush, no less; he even lied to authorities about his identity at that time. Somehow, he snuck back in, and there appears to be no knowledge as to where, when, or how – but since 2021, he surely would have found ample opportunity.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jimenez Meza was taken into custody in Tecate, California on Aug. 11, 2004, and claimed he was a Mexican native named Erik Melendez-Arellano.
ICE said he was voluntarily deported to Mexico — but reentered the US at some point.
Jimenez Meza was arrested in Yonkers on Sept. 11, 2018 on a drunken driving charged but was released on a $500 fine, according to records and sources.
ICE said the agency lodged an immigration detainer with the Westchester County Jail on Wednesday.
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And, yes, he was even picked up for drunk driving, at which point a sane system would have checked his immigration status – just as anyone who is arrested and indicted should have their legal status determined – and yet, somehow, he was not deported.
Horse gone: Check. Barn door closed: Check.
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Once again, we see the cost of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s wide-open-border policies. Yes, Meza came in well before the Biden administration – the first time. But at that time, he was not allowed to stay. There appears to be no good information, as noted above, as to when, where, or how he came in the second time. But that doesn’t make this Charlie Foxtrot on the part of the federal government any less egregious; he did get in, and he went from the southern border to upstate New York, where he had been living long enough to strike up a relationship with the woman he later shot, along with her sons, one of whom was killed.
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This is what the Harris-Biden administration’s lack of border enforcement has wrought.
It is, of course, belaboring the obvious to note that a nation with no borders is no nation at all. At present, we have very little control over our borders. Remember that when you go to vote.
