Do we file this one under the good news column or the bad news?

On the positive news front, out in Utah there was an arrest by ICE of a known sex offender. Chalk one up for the good guys. The reason ICE was in on the action is that the offender, Sergio Amador-Olive, was in the country illegally. The not so encouraging portion of the story is that he was a familiar figure to immigration enforcement. (Fox News)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested an undocumented immigrant from Mexico living in Utah with two state sexual assault convictions and two federal immigration convictions.

37-year-old Sergio Amador-Olive was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender. He was also listed by ICE as a priority for deportation given that he was is in the country illegally and has multiple state and federal convictions.

“By removing criminal aliens like Amador-Olive from the streets and ultimately from the country, ICE has a profound and positive impact on overall public safety,” said Daniel Bible, field office director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in Salt Lake City, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. “This specific case also shows that there are significant consequences to criminal aliens who illegally re-enter the United States after they are deported.”

That’s a pretty good press conference for ICE to be able to hold. For once we’re reporting a story of a repeat offending illegal immigrant who was captured before they either raped, killed or robbed somebody else. But it still begs the question… how did this guy keep getting back in the country over and over again to continue his crime spree? The answer to that one is fairly easy, but it’s not a subject which the Obama administration cares to talk about. Local law enforcement can do the best job possible to find the bad guys and ICE can boot them out on the occasions where the administration allows them to, but as long as we have a border which is roughly as tough as a wet noodle people like Amador-Olive will keep coming back over and over again. And it doesn’t seem as if this one was here with a huge change of heart and looking to enroll at Princeton.

It’s not as if we don’t still make the effort to boot out illegal felons from time to time. Last March we deported more than 2,000 in a single sweep. (Washington Times)

Immigration agents netted more than 2,000 illegal immigrants with serious criminal records in a major sweep last week as the administration tried to prove it can still enforce the law and find priority deportation cases even in light of President Obama’s amnesty.

More than 1,000 of those arrested had felony convictions on their records. The others were gang members, had three or more misdemeanors such as drunken driving or were otherwise deemed to be serious enough threats that they should be ousted.

Based on the timing, it doesn’t look like the lead actor in today’s tale was among that haul, but we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the sweep in question came up with 1,000 felons in a single week who were in the country illegally. How many of them are already back in the country now? With all that in mind, no matter how well funded and trained our border officers and other ICE agents may be, you’ll never finish bailing out the boat until you stop up the hole in the hull. Perhaps we could use some sort of barrier along the border. Hrm… if only we had the technology to construct such a thing.