Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael E. Pahira Jr., 44, would still be alive if Michael Bon had not come here from Haiti. That is what the Trump administration wants people to focus on.
It was devastating enough that the veteran of nearly two decades with the state police was fatally struck on July 1 by a tractor-trailer the authorities say was driven by Bon.
But the administration, which since last year has consistently targeted immigrants with both bullets and blame, didn’t stop there.
Playing out the string on the White House’s misguided way of thinking would lead us to believe that this calamity would not have occurred if the law didn’t allow Bon to work while his immigration application made its way through the system.
Or if the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles had taken away Bon’s commercial driver’s license once his application for Temporary Protected Status was denied.
Or if the situation in Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world thanks to colonialism and rampant exploitation by Spain, France, and the U.S., had not forced Bon and his family to look for a better life elsewhere.
Or if Christopher Columbus hadn’t stumbled upon what he dubbed “The Spanish Island” back in 1492 in the first place.
If you want, you can even throw in the logistics industry, or our consumer culture that sees commercial trucks travel roughly more than 300 billion miles every year, resulting in 5,832 fatal crashes in 2022, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The question becomes: At which point in this list do we stop when assigning blame?
For the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, you send out a news release that stops at, “This illegal alien was granted a commercial driver’s license by the sanctuary state of Massachusetts.”
This thought exercise is hardly meant to diminish the passing of Pahira, who was, by all accounts, as Gov. Josh Shapiro noted, “one of our very finest.”
On the contrary: Pahira’s life and work would seem to deserve a richer memorial than being turned into one more talking point on the political right for how immigrants are dangerous. How the stand-up guy who had, as Fox News accurately described, “moved home to care for mom with cancer” must also play political pawn to the first half of that headline: “Illegal immigrant truck driver charged in death of trooper.”
No one disputes that Bon, 33, was in the country without authorization at the time of the incident, but that fact has nothing to do with the crash that killed Pahira.
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Bon had applied for immigration relief and was denied, so by the time he applied for renewal of his Massachusetts commercial driver’s license, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system should have flagged him as ineligible — but it didn’t, according to officials with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. (That this same federal database is the one the Trump administration wants to use to check if people can vote is another problem for another time.)
Do immigrants commit crime? Of course, they are human beings who can make bad decisions. That they are less likely to do so than the U.S.-born is statistically proven.
It’s also cold comfort to victims when it does happen. However, our lives often progress in unpredictable — and, yes, painful — ways.
Whether you believe in a higher power or an indifferent universe, fate or random chance, Bon and Pahira fatally crossed paths along a stretch of Interstate 81 in Schuylkill County regardless of immigration status.
There is nothing wrong with calling for tighter commercial driver’s license laws — as a bipartisan group of Pennsylvania legislators in the U.S. House did last week — or implementing additional safety measures for those driving a fully loaded 40-ton vehicle. It is even fair to ask for restrictions on people who may only be in the country temporarily.
But fearmongering and casting all immigrants as threats is reckless.
Bon is being held on a $700,000 bond. Among other charges, he is accused of homicide by vehicle. He will be held accountable, evidence will be presented, and hopefully justice will be served. Whatever consequences come his way, he will face them as an individual.
Using Pahira’s death to further demonize immigrants debases a brave trooper’s memory — and is an insult to everyone else’s intelligence.