Funny how after all these years of Americans being run down by drunk driving illegal aliens, the crime of inebriated vehicle operation by unlawful foreigners is still not taken seriously by authorities. One recent example was of the preventable death of 21-year-old Sarah Root of Omaha Nebraska. Had illegal alien DREAMer type Edwin Mejia not been given refugee status by the open-borders administration and sent home, he wouldn’t have been around to kill an innocent young American. Worse, the government doubled its guilt by releasing the alien killer from jail instead of holding him for trial.

A Monday report on Fox News provided a quick summary of a very disturbing case:

ABBY HUNTSMAN: We’re looking at this story of an illegal immigrant on the run, accused of killing a young woman in a drunken street-racing accident. Edwin Mejia was arrested and posted bail — you can see him here in Nebraska — but immigration officials never detained him — why? Well they say his crimes didn’t meet ICE’s quote “enforcement priorities.” William La Jeunesse is live for us from our West Coast newsroom. William, walk us through what happened here and why they let this guy go. WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: The big question is why would the administration let this illegal immigrant out of jail just days after killing a woman, despite a plea from cops and a previous warrant. So 21-year-old Sarah Root had just graduated from college when police say Edwin Mejia plowed into her car drunk without a license. Omaha police put him in jail, asked ICE to detain him while prosecutors prepared their homicide case. ICE refused, saying Mejia’s arrest did not meet their enforcement priorities as outlined by the president and Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson. Outraged Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse tried but failed to get a straight answer from ICE Director Sara Saldana: SASSE: If an illegal alien kills an American citizen, should ICE let that person go free? SALDANA: There will be criminal consequences. SASSE: We don’t know where the man is. LA JEUNESSE: So Saldana said they couldn’t hold Mejia because Root wasn’t dead; that wasn’t true. She also claimed that ICE didn’t have time to hold him. Well police called four times starting at 7:30 in the morning for ICE to issue that detainer, they were refused. Twelve hours later they let him go. HUNTSMAN: That begs the question: if this guy wasn’t an enforcement priority, then who is? LA JEUNESSE: DHS policy says they will only hold the suspect if he has a prior felony conviction, saying last week quote “Based on the totality of circumstances involved when arrested, ICE decided not to issue a detainer at the time. Now, however, he’s ON ICE’s Ten Most Wanted list. That’s little consolation to Sarah’s father. SCOTT ROOT: I don’t know what else I can say, they can’t bring her back. Somebody’s gotta be held accountable, you know, apparently he isn’t. LA JEUNESSE: Mejia, who came to the border in 2013 as a minor was allowed to stay as a refugee; jumped bail. Police believe he is now back in Honduras.

In a related item about the drastically reduced public safety in this country caused by Obama administration policies, the video below notes that the Migration Policy Institute has found that 820,000 illegal immigrants in the US have been convicted of crime. Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald remarked about the Root killing, “The ultimate agenda is to delegitimize deportation entirely as a response to illegal immigration. We cannot even deport illegal alien criminals. And once we lose deportation as a response to illegal entry, we have basically ceded the borders completely.”

This story provides details about Senator Sasse’s attempt to get some response out of the useless Sarah Saldana: