I’ve got an item up at The Atlantic about racial politics in Los Angeles, pegged to the recent murder of a black high school student by a Hispanic illegal immigrant. While I argue in the piece that Southern California jails should make better efforts to check the immigration status of all inmates, and deport rather than release those here illegally when their sentence is completed, the argument really applies to the whole country — many thousands of illegal immigrant ex-cons are released back into the population because local jailers and the federal government don’t bother to identify and deport them.
UPDATE: LA County Sherrif Lee Baca said today that Hispanic gang members are sometimes deliberately murdering any young black man they can find. Explosive stuff.
