{"id":168063,"date":"2016-07-13T10:26:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T16:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=168063"},"modified":"2016-07-13T10:26:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T16:26:39","slug":"congress-puts-politics-ahead-of-public-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/07\/congress-puts-politics-ahead-of-public-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress puts politics ahead of public safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>Congress did what Congress does again. They put partisan politics ahead of good public policy.<\/p>\n

\"John

Courtesy photo<\/p>

John Sanchez<\/p><\/div>\n

Kate Steinle, a 32 year old woman, was shot in the back while walking with her father in San Francisco last year. She tragically died in his arms. Her killer, an undocumented immigrant, had seven prior convictions and had been deported five times before that day but was released back onto the streets due to San Francisco\u2019s sanctuary-city approach to those who break the law.<\/p>\n

Her death inspired a bill<\/a> that, if passed, would have imposed a mandatory, minimum 5-year sentence for illegal reentry offenses to help deter criminals like Kate’s killer from reentering the United States. This is a commonsense piece of legislation to keep Americans safe and it should have been passed.<\/p>\n

I am deeply disappointed that 42 United States senators, including New Mexico\u2019s Sen.\u00a0Tom Udall and Sen.\u00a0Martin Heinrich, allowed partisan political differences to get in the way of passing \u201cKate\u2019s Law\u201d and sending a clear and appropriate message that America has a zero-tolerance policy for violent crime. Instead their actions shouted a different message \u2013 that any tiny political advantage or small partisan disagreement is more important to those in Washington D.C. than standing up for victims of violent crime.<\/p>\n

Americans and our elected representatives in Washington are legitimately divided on many issues including immigration, but we should all be united in standing up for victims of crime. Passing \u201cKate\u2019s Law\u201d would provide law enforcement and immigration officials with the tools and authority to do more and it would have sent an undeniable message that we won\u2019t tolerate violent crime \u2013 no matter who the criminal is.<\/p>\n

Standing up for victims of crime is not a Democrat issue or a Republican issue \u2013 it is an American issue, and when there is a choice to be made between standing with those who commit crimes or their victims, I\u2019ll stand with victims every time.<\/p>\n

John Sanchez<\/a>, a Republican, is New Mexico’s lieutenant governor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans and our elected representatives in Washington are legitimately divided on many issues including immigration, but we should all be united in standing up for victims of crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[140,142,107,116],"class_list":["post-168063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-crime","tag-roundhouse","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}