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October
31, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
Just
a Number
The Malvo age
issue.
By Michelle
Malkin
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 ust
wondering: How old is Lee Malvo, really?
According to Immigration
and Naturalization Service records, illegal-alien sniper suspect Lee Malvo
told Border Patrol agents in Bellingham, Wash., that his birth date was
February 18, 1985. That would have made him 16 years old at the time of
his immigration-related apprehension in December 2001 — and five
months shy of his 18th birthday when he left a fateful fingerprint at
the liquor-store murder scene in Montgomery, Alabama on September 21,
2002. Ten days after the Alabama shooting, the Washington-area sniping
spree began.
As INS documents
show, Malvo possessed no identification papers whatsoever at the time
of his encounter with the Border Patrol in Bellingham. Some newspapers,
such as the Orlando Sentinel, have reported that records in Jamaica
indicate that a "Lee Boyd Malvo" was indeed born on Feb. 18,
1985, at Queen Victoria Jubilee Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. But the
New York Times reported Tuesday that Malvo may be "17 or 18"
and that Jamaican authorities "have yet to unearth an authentic birth
certificate."
The doubts about
Malvo's true age underscore the problem of verifying illegal aliens' claims
of juvenile status once they land on our shores. I'll bet my wrinkle cream
that no small portion of the Haitian boat people who landed in Miami yesterday
will try and pass themselves off as cohorts of the Nickelodeon generation.
There is a large
incentive to fudge the numbers. Minors who enter the United States illegally,
unlike most adult illegal aliens, qualify for exemptions from immediate
deportation. They are automatically released to any family members living
in the country while deportation hearings slowly move forward.
INS also allows minors
to remain in the United States if they file for political asylum. The
backlog of claims is huge, allowing asylum applicants young and old to
disappear into the American mainstream. Even if a juvenile alien is denied
asylum, he can remain in the country if relatives in his native land cannot
be contacted before sending him back. Moreover, agency spokesman Art Moreno
has noted in the past that "Young adults arrested by the Border Patrol
often pose as juveniles in hopes they can escape from the less-secure
juvenile facilities."
INS policy calls
for the use of dental and wrist-bone X-rays to determine age. The emergence
and growth of wisdom teeth and the fusion of the ulna and radius bones
in the wrist are reliable indicators of adulthood. The usual suspects
in the pro-illegal alien lobby, however, have attacked these tests as
inhumane. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, is preparing a
class-action lawsuit challenging the INS's use of X-rays to determine
age as a violation of the due process rights of "defenseless children."
One of the leading
allies of the Southern Poverty Law Center in opposing such testing and
close scrutiny of illegal aliens claiming to be juveniles is the Northwest
Immigrants Rights Project — which Malvo's mother contacted while
in INS custody in December 2001, and whose representation succeeded in
getting mommy and son sprung.
Without any documented
proof of his birth date (or anything else about his identity, for that
matter), how did INS deportation officers or the immigration-court system
verify "defenseless child" Malvo's age before sending him on
his merry way? Inquiring minds want to know.
—
Michelle Malkin is author of Invasion:
How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces
to Our Shores.
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