The Forgotten White Sox fan and Biden’s chaos on the Southern Border
By John Kass
America’s Southern border is in chaos with some ten thousand illegal immigrants living in misery, in that squalid Joe Biden shantytown under the viaduct in Del Rio, Texas.
All that is courtesy of President Biden’s immigration policies. He called for a surge on the Southern border as he pandered for votes. And now thousands more are on their way.
As Democrats panic over the coming 2022 mid-terms, the desire of their media cheerleaders to change the subject away from the border is intense.
And so, I really don’t think they’re interested in mentioning Dennis McCann, White Sox fan.
“He was the most fanatic White Sox fan you’ve ever met,” his brother, Brian, told me on Tuesday. “He was so crazy about the Sox that he once visited Nellie Fox’s widow just to say hi. And now that the Sox are on a roll, we’ll be honoring Denny at my house this year in a couple weeks. We’ll honor his memory. We’ll talk about the Sox. He’d have liked that.”
You’ve forgotten Dennis McCann?
His brother hasn’t forgotten. His family and friends haven’t forgotten. And I haven’t forgotten what happened to him.
The other night at the Emerald Society dinner, I ran into Brian and told him I’d call to write about it and so that others won’t forget. With all the noise and spin about the chaos at the border, I thought you might want to be reminded of what happened.
Dennis McCann was killed in June of 2011 by a drunk driver as he walked on the 2700 block of North Kedzie in Chicago.
The driver, Saul Chavez, 36, had already been convicted of one DUI charge.
For a column on Dennis McCann at that newspaper I once worked for, I quoted a witness, Alberto Aceves, 39, who said:
“I heard the impact, saw this man go up into the sky and land on the windshield. I thought, OK, he hit him, but the driver is going to stop. He might be all right.”
But Chavez didn’t stop. He stepped on the gas, the tires rolling over McCann who’d fallen to the street, and then the underbelly of the car caught him and dragged McCann’s body North on Kedzie for about a quarter of a mile until he was arrested.
“I pull up to the passenger side screaming at him,” Aceves recalled. “Stop! The guy’s under your car.”
Chavez had just finished a two-year probationary sentence on another drunk driving conviction. And on the night McCann was killed and dragged under Chavez’ car, authorities said Chavez had a blood alcohol content of 0.29 percent. He was charged with a felony–aggravated driving under the influence.
As Chavez sat in jail, just two days later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security filed an immigration detainer. The agency believed that Chavez was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and as such, was a flight risk. The agency requested that the Cook County government notify ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) if Chavez was to be released.
But then politics rushed in. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle (now chair of the Cook County Democratic Party) and then Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (now a U.S. Congressman from the Southwest Side) pushed through a new policy to ignore federal detainer requests and allow suspected illegal immigrants who’d been jailed to make bond.
Democrats pushed it through by a 10-5 vote and Democrats like Preckwinkle and Garcia were as the angels of immigration for thwarting ICE. And Chavez must have been happy too, because he quickly posted bond out of the Cook County Jail run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
And then Chavez disappeared into Mexico.
But the immigration angels don’t want to hear about the Dennis McCanns. They’d rather talk about process.
Asked why illegal immigrants rushing across the Southern Border are not required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while foreign visitors arriving by plane must show proof of vaccination, Biden’s press secretary demonstrated something remarkable.
Apparently, she wanted Americans to see what a bus looks like when its wheels fall off.
“They are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time,” said Jen Psaki. “I don’t think it’s the same thing. It is not the same thing.”
Another way to avoid the border chaos is to gorge on something else. The media now has the Gabby Petito homicide case to feast upon. And just a few days ago CNN, MSNBC and others were fear-gorging over that weak “Justice for J-6” rally in Washington—in which FBI agents and reporters outnumbered protesters—as they equated Republican voters with domestic terrorists.
That one fizzled in their faces.
And as I talked to Brian McCann about his brother on Tuesday, left wing Democrats and their media handmaidens were onto the next outrage, this one involving wild accusations that U.S. Border Agents on horseback used “whips” to drive some illegal border crossers back over the river to Ciudad Acuna, Mexico.
Those aren’t “whips.” Those are reins used to control horses. But why would political spinners know about work horses and crowd control? Washington journos have soft hands. They whip Americans with their tweets.
And Chavez?
“Chavez is down in Mexico,” Brian McCann said. “His brother bailed him out. He fled. The FBI has a warrant, the Mexican authorities issued a warrant, but we can’t force them to execute their warrant. The FBI says, ‘We think he’s driving a truck. He visits his mother.’”
Brian McCann sees what’s happening at the border. He sees the chaos and the frantic news spin. He understands what desperate migrants—both legal and illegal—want:
Everything American taxpayers will give them.
“I’m not against them. They’re desperate. And my anger really isn’t with Chavez,” he said. “It’s the politics.”
What bothers McCann are the politicians and the politics, changing federal containment policies that once worked at the border, and ignoring federal immigration law in the states with “sanctuary city” policies.
“Chavez is alive and well,” McCann said. “For all I know he may be back in the country, with his name changed, or not. Who knows? My anger has been with Toni Preckwinkle, Dart and Chuy. My whole thing, John, is that the politics are so rotten.”
The politics are rotten. The spin has a smell to it. And pro-Biden media try to avoid what’s happening.
And few want to remember the Denny McCanns.
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(copyright 2021 John Kass)