In the aftermath of a grisly murder in Western Washington involving an alleged illegal immigrant, the host of a popular midday Seattle radio program wrote at MyNorthwest.com, “Jay Inslee, Dow Constantine, Jenny Durkan, Bob Ferguson, and Mitzi Johanknecht once again have blood on their hands after the recent Auburn murder.”
The murder victim in this case was 16-year-old Juan Carlos Con Guzman. His body was found in the Green River southeast of Seattle by some fishermen. Inslee is Washington’s governor. Constantine is the King County Executive. Durkan is mayor of Seattle. Ferguson is the state attorney general and Johanknect is the King County sheriff. That’s a pretty strong accusation to be leveling.
KIRO’s Dori Monson has been a constant critic of them all, and he points to the “sanctuary laws” now in effect in Washington, and evidently backed by all five officials, as being a deadly problem.
Fighting back, Constantine issued a statement declaring that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office “is now on a public relations offensive against jurisdictions that follow the rule of law, alerting the media to instances when agents send civil Immigration Detainers that are prohibited by county policy.”
This is the same Dow Constantine who, six years ago while promoting a “gun buyback” scheme in Seattle, insisted that the no-question-asked event was a good idea because “If we can prevent just one child, one innocent bystander, from being the victim of a random accident, or the target of an unstable person, it will be well worth our time and effort.”
Why is the potential for preventing an accidental death any more important than potentially preventing a homicide by alerting ICE about an illegal alien in custody?
The Washington Times is reporting on testimony before Congress by ICE official Timothy S. Robbins that blamed California’s sanctuary policies for “causing as many as 100 illegal immigrants with criminal records to be released out into the communities every day in the Los Angeles area alone.”
According to KIRO Eyewitness News, ICE has asserted that murder suspect Carlos Iraheta-Vega, arrested in the Guzman slaying, “has been shielded from immigration enforcement by King County sanctuary policies.” He reportedly has a “long history of priors,” according to Monson’s piece at MyNorthwest.com.
Inslee, Constantine, Durkan and Ferguson are all gun control advocates, and Ferguson has lobbied for a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” In 2018, Johanknecht was one of the authors of the published argument supporting gun control Initiative 1639 in the state voter’s pamphlet.
I-1639 is the measure that prohibits young adults from purchasing any semi-automatic rifle, and created a new crime of “community endangerment.” It also mandates a training requirement in order to purchase a “semi-automatic assault rifle,” which includes every self-loading rifle ever manufactured under the initiatives sweeping definition. It is currently being challenged in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on federal constitutional grounds.
Possibly the greatest irony in all of this is that the teenage Guzman didn’t die from a gunshot wound. He was beaten and hacked to death apparently with a bat and machete. There are no background checks on bats or machetes.
