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Man who drew ‘swastikas’ on Union Station is twice-deported illegal immigrant, with very long rap sheet

February 3, 2022 | | Print Article

Just one day after “International Holocaust Remembrance Day,” columns and walls outside Washington D.C.’s Union Station were covered with profane messages and more than 150 swastikas, sparking more talk among liberals of the rise of White Supremacy in America.

There’s only one problem: The alleged perpetrator wasn’t white.

D.C. police arrested Geraldo Pando on Jan. 28, and it turns out, he’s a Mexican citizen with a rap sheet that spans 15 years and has earned him two deportations, according to the Washington Examiner.

“Arrest records obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner reveal that Pando had an extensive 35-page criminal history in Colorado before he arrived in the District of Columbia recently,” the Examiner reports. “Despite his record, Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not attempt to take him into federal custody after his Union Station arrest so that he could face deportation proceedings in court, instead allowing him to remain in the United States.”

The article goes on to say that Pando was arrested just the week before for allegedly vandalizing the headquarters of the U.S. Capitol Police.

“Capitol Police released him because ICE did not ask that he be detained until he could be transferred into federal custody,” the article states.

“The criminal who defaced Union Station with anti-Semitic symbols, Geraldo Pando, should not have been able to commit this act of hatred,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). “He is a convicted felon and an unlawful migrant with a criminal history of deportations and arrests, including for assault on a first responder.”

Portman, who is the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, blames Biden’s soft-on-crime policies

“It is inexcusable that ICE did not process him and he was released back into the community to commit such a heinous crime,” he continued. “This administration’s poor policies and reluctance to remove criminals from our streets continue to result in additional harm to our country.”

Pando’s known Colorado crimes include charges of felony drug possession, trespassing with intent to commit a crime, possession of burglary tools, and, as Sen. Portman noted, assaulting a first responder.

Pando has served time in jail, violated the terms of his probation multiple times, and has no legal right to be in the United States. Still, ICE was either unwilling or unable to take Pando into custody, thanks to new guidelines, enacted by the Biden administration in early 2021, that limited ICE arrests to three categories: illegal immigrants who are believed to be a national security threat; immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally after Nov. 1, 2021; and those who are either affiliated with known gangs or have been convicted of a select group of felonies.

In November, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas removed more teeth from ICE’s bite by declaring that each arrest had to be decided on a case-by-case basis, to ensure things such as race, gender, national origin, or political associations don’t cloud the agency’s judgment.

The result is that people such as Pando no longer need to fear deportation.

“Anyone outside these categories, including someone who had been newly arrested by a local police department and had previously been convicted of multiple felonies, would not be fit for arrest unless approved by a supervisor,” the Examiner states.

In short, while allowing our border with Mexico to go unchecked, Biden has tied ICE’s hands.

That the hate crime was committed by a non-White offender is a subject of both anger and spin, depending mostly, it seems, upon personal biases.

Some are claiming the symbols scrawled on Union Plaza aren’t even swastikas, but rather Hindu symbols of prosperity, though there’s no explanation as to why a Mexican national would be spray-painting Hindu symbols in D.C.

Others jokingly suggest that racism in America is such a non-issue, Nazis need to be imported.

https://twitter.com/SamLowryEsq/status/1489146863177637889?s=20&t=-cNiJdvE6MJgqy7sX9W6kA

But overwhelmingly, a nation weary of hoaxes, garage-pulls-as-nooses, and actors pretending to be beat up on their way home from Subway, simply wants the accusations of racism to end.

Melissa Fine
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