Say, wasn’t it Hillary -- not Donald Trump -- who pointed a gun at a young illegal immigrant and deported him?

By Daniel John Sobieski

Time was when Hillary Clinton shared Donald Trump’s dream of family reunification for illegal alien families, just not on this side of the border. Hillary, who trashes Trump’s desire to end the fraud of birthright citizenship just for being pregnant while slipping past the border patrol, was even First Lady when presidential hubby William Jefferson Clinton returned young Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba, literally at gunpoint.

As recently as June, 2014, when unaccompanied minor children were being ferried by “coyotes” under contract north on the tops of boxcars in what GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush said was an “act of love”, Hillary Clinton told CNN such children should be quickly returned to their foreign parents, to send a message:

“They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who the responsible adults in their family are because there are concerns about whether all of them can be sent back, but I think all of them that can be should be reunited with their families,” she said, adding that the United States must do more to confront the violence in the region and strengthen border security. “But we have to send a clear message that ‘Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean your child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”

They should be sent back as soon as possible, she said, which is what Donald Trump is saying.

We don’t want to encourage more children to come, which is what Donald Trump is saying. Trump would go farther, building the same type of fence Israel has built and Saudi Arabia is building as well as interpreting the 14th Amendment as it was written, an amendment to guarantee freed slaves, not illegal aliens, their U.S. citizenship.

President Bill Clinton was also for family reunification of minor children with their parents south of U.S. territory as shown by the case of Eliang Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy who as he was nearing his sixth birthday on Thanksgiving 199 when a fisherman off the Florida coast found him hanging on tp an inner tube after his mother, among others fleeing Castro’s Cuba drowned in the attempt.

Elian’s mother was hoping to bring Elian and join the extended family in the U.S. as they fled the poverty and oppression (sound familiar?) of Cuba. Elian’s father, who was separated from his wife at the time, chose to stay behind. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized:

As Fox News Latino reported, Gonzalez's Miami relatives had refused to surrender him to authorities, leading to the infamous raid on April 22, 2000, on President Bill Clinton's watch, by armed federal agents who seized Elian at gunpoint from a closet where he was hiding at his uncle's home in Little Havana.

He was forcibly returned to Cuba two months later….

It was then-Deputy Attorney General Holder who invented the "legal" cover for federal agents to forcibly enter the home of Elian Gonzalez's legal custodians, American citizens all, so he could be returned to the warm embrace of Castro in communist Cuba.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that once the INS chose a guardian, the guardianship could not be changed. On Dec, 1, 1999, the INS asserted that Miami-based uncle Lazaro Gonzalez was now Elian's legal custodian. Holder then decided on his own that the court ruling and the INS determination were both invalid and that Elian would be returned to his father in Cuba…

Today, if Elian Gonzalez were Honduran and his reunited family likely to vote Democratic down the road, he might get to stay with Holder's blessings under the same rule of lawlessness that once forcibly returned a young Cuban boy to Castro's tyranny.

Aye, there’s the rub, Hispanics were more in political play in 1999 and the Cubans of south Florida were staunchly Republican. Just ask Florida Senator and presidential contender Marco Rubio, himself the son of Cuban immigrants seeking freedom from oppression. Today, “illegal alien” is a term many find synonymous with “undocumented So it is no surprise that Democrats, who under Bill Clinton, stood silently by as Elian Gonzalez was seized at gunpoint and forcibly removed to the oppression of Castro’s Communist Cuba, now hyperventilate as Donald Trump proposes building a high wall, albeit with a big gate, to protect American sovereignty and the declining value of U.S. citizenship.

We should at least copy what has been called the “Great Wall of Saudi Arabia”. Built to block a potential influx of Islamic State terrorists, it accomplishes what a sovereign state is obligated to do – protect its borders. We too often ignore the fact that among the flood of “oppressed” illegal aliens, gang members like those of MS-13 and terrorists could be hiding, as Marine Corps. Gen. John Kelly recently testified before Congress:

"Clearly, criminal networks can move just about anything on these smuggling pipelines," he testified in February to the House Armed Services Committee. "Terrorist organizations could seek to leverage those same smuggling routes to move operatives with intent to cause grave harm to our citizens or even quite easily bring weapons of mass destruction into the United States."

Build Trump’s fence first, and then talk about immigration reform. And while we are having this conversation, Mrs. Clinton, let us remember it was Bill Clinton who pointed a gun at Elian Gonzalez, not Donald Trump.


Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.