The New Yorker Goes to Bat for Model (Non) Citizen

One of the most ironic things about the whining about Trump’s immigration policies is that, in many cases, liberals wind up arguing that the US cannot deport violent criminals who torture and murder Americans because they claim to fear being…murdered and tortured in any country to which they might be deported.

The argument reminds me of a hilarious scene in Annie Hall, where Alvie Singer’s socialist parents have a fight about the cleaning lady who steals from them. 

That was from back when Woody Allen was really funny. I love that movie, even though Woody Allen has proven to be a perv. 

You get the point. Liberals see victimhood everywhere, and excuse the behavior of “victims” even when they are victimizing others. 

I thought of this as I read this tendentious article from The New Yorker, which quotes every left wing activist who babbles on about “disappearing” people and credulously believes every claim made by people who are not just illegal aliens who came to America to be law-abiding citizens, but actual violent felons and murderers who have been legally given removal orders but who have stalled them due to claims of potential persecution. 

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— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) November 25, 2025

Not that the article goes into why these criminals needed to be kicked out of the country pronto. It glosses over the fact that they are violent felons, and instead focuses on their sob stories. The exact kind of sob stories that any judge has heard a thousand times from murderers, drug dealers, and felons arrested 87 times before they light people on fire on public transit. 

I can create a sob story for anybody, including myself. Some may even be true, but you could go back to the first hominid and excuse any horrific crime if you judge based only on the hard luck somebody experiences. Half the people making excuses will go on to explain that if the Jews had only been better Germans they wouldn’t have been rounded up into concentration camps. 

I bet I could whip up a sob story for Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden if I cared. 

Whose hard luck matters is based on their personal preferences. These liberals care about the perpetrators, not the victims. 

In this particular article we get many sob stories, but I want to highlight one as an example:

ICE deported the South Sudan Eight and the Eswatini Five. Among those sent to Eswatini was Orville Etoria, a sixty-two-year-old man who’d lived in New York for nearly fifty years.

In late August, I met with Etoria’s aunt Margaret McKen at her home in Canarsie, Brooklyn. A professor at Hunter College’s School of Education, McKen confessed that she was reluctant to talk with me. (I agreed to use her maiden name.) “I’ve been a naturalized citizen for thirty years, and I don’t even have a parking ticket, but you never know what they can do to you,” she said. “I’ve started to have a phobia that ICE will come and break down my door.”

Still, McKen felt that the public ought to know what had happened to her nephew, and who he was. Born in Jamaica, Etoria came to Brooklyn at the age of twelve, in 1976. He lived with his mother in Crown Heights, where she worked at a day-care center. As a young adult, Etoria suffered from psychiatric problems. In 1997, he was convicted of second-degree murder, for shooting a man in a leather-goods store, and received a sentence of twenty-five years to life. Eventually, an immigration judge issued an order of removal against him, meaning that he could be deported once he got out of prison.

Etoria had been convicted of a serious crime, but, McKen said, he had evolved as a person. While incarcerated, Etoria had earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science and worked toward a master’s in divinity. After his release, in 2021, he got a job at a homeless shelter in Queens, helping to get health care and housing for men who needed support, as he once had. He lived in a three-story brownstone, which he shared with his mother and one of his two adult sons.

They were a close-knit family, McKen told me, noting that, upon his release, Etoria had cared for his mother through a terminal illness. “When Orville was in prison, his mom was like the mailman—rain, sleet, or snow, she’d always travel to see him,” McKen said. “When he came home, he eased his mother’s burden, cleaning the house, buying groceries, and cooking her oxtail and salmon.” More recently, McKen recalled, “He got a car, and he told me, ‘I’m paying my own water bill!’ ”

So…he was convicted of a “serious crime,” but he really is a great guy. 

So who is Etoria, who, by the way, was ordered deported SIXTEEN YEARS AGO but used a loophole to escape due process? After The New York Times ran a similar sob story about this model citizen, Homeland Security gave a bit of context:

WASHINGTON — The New York Times ran a sob story of Orville Etoria, an illegal alien from Jamaica and a convicted MURDERER.

In addition to murder, this serial criminal’s rap sheet includes criminal possession of a weapon, armed robbery, and forcible theft with a deadly weapon.

Following his criminal convictions, Etoria’s green card was revoked. Etoria was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2009. Sixteen years later, this dangerous individual is finally off our streets and out of the country thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem. On July 17, he was deported.

“If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, you could end up in CECOT, Eswatini, South Sudan, or another third country. President Trump and Secretary Noem are using every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens out of American communities and out of our country. Our message is clear: Criminals are not welcome in the United States,” said a DHS Spokesperson. “Why does the New York Times continue to peddle sob stories of criminal illegal aliens? When will they finally shed light on their victims? Every single day President Trump and Secretary Noem fight for justice for American victims of illegal alien crime and nearly every single day the media ignores these victims and their families.”

This is not the first time the New York Times peddled the sob story of a criminal illegal alien. Earlier this year, they published another sob story on a convicted kidnapper.

ICE deported Nascimento Blair, a criminal illegal alien convicted kidnapper, on Feb 27, 2025 to Jamaica. On October 12, 2005, he was arrested for kidnapping and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 2008, an immigration judge issued him a final order of removal. Because of the previous administration’s open border policies, this criminal illegal alien was released onto the streets of New York.

Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, this kidnapper is out of our country.

President Trump and Secretary Noem have been clear, DHS is prioritizing arresting and deporting the worst of the worst.

Murder, armed robbery, and theft with a deadly weapon. And another sob story about a kidnapper. 

But they have CHANGED! Oh, FFS, man. Give it a rest. The victim of that murder has changed too. He is rotting six feet under. 

The reason why Trump is deporting some criminal aliens to third countries is that they have used a loophole: they claim to fear persecution in their own country, so they should enjoy the hospitality of the United States and our willingness to give criminals a pass to stay here after a deportation order is made. 

But even the Supreme Court has ruled that Trump may do that, even though liberals don’t like it. 

Do I wish we didn’t have to deport criminal aliens to places they would rather not go? Perhaps, a little. But I also would rather not have criminal aliens here at all. The “diversity” they bring is not our strength, and keeping them here is definitely our undoing. 

I think that having a debate about what to do with cases like this is perfectly legitimate, and if liberals want to chime in with reasonable alternatives I am willing to listen. 

But whining about “disappearing” people and hiding the nature of the criminals who are being kicked out doesn’t incline me to listen. It is sophistry. It is bad faith. It is manipulating people, not begining a reasonable discussion. 

When people do this, they deserve to be mocked and shunned. I don’t care how many NGO “experts” and human rights advocates you quote. 

Either have a rational debate, or STFU. Giving murderers a tongue bath doesn’t incline me to hear you out. 

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