An illegal alien in Florida escaped prosecution for resisting arrest because he speaks no English…and now he’s suing the estate of the officer who collapsed while arresting him. If you’ve ever wondered how lost America is, I think this story tells the tale. I’ll limit my comments because he facts really do speak for themselves.

Virgilio Aguilar Mendez is a Guatemalan citizen who came to America illegally, ending up in St. Augustine, Florida. Last year, Sgt. Michael Kunovich, an experienced police officer, believed that Mendez was behaving suspiciously and began to question him.

Mendez announced that he didn’t speak English and tried to walk away. Of course, walking away from a police officer isn’t how it works in Guatemala or America, so Kunovich grabbed Mendez. Mendez responded with violence. Kunovich then collapsed from a deadly heart attack. You can see the interaction in this video:

As I see it, the point isn’t whether the cops had the right to stop Mendez. The point is that—in America, as in Guatemala—you don’t walk away from cops and you don’t resist arrest. Once you start resisting arrest, you’re the one engaging in wrongful activity. And while I appreciate that Mendez might not have understood the instructions if he’d been passive, they would have just rolled him over onto his stomach…problem solved.

Because a police officer died immediately after Mendez’s violent struggle, the prosecutor treated Mendez’s struggle as the triggering event and charged him with aggravated manslaughter.

To recap, at this point, according to the facts available, we have an illegal alien, which is a criminal status, and a person who apparently resisted arrest, which is a criminal action. In a perfect world, the former status, absent genuine, not Biden-created, mitigating factors, should result in deportation, and the latter act should lead to a trial.

However, we do not live in a perfect world.

First, ICE released Mendez.

Second, all charges against Mendez were dropped because an autopsy proved that Kunovich had serious heart disease. When it comes to the manslaughter dismissal, think about this one very carefully.

Stripped to its essentials, here is what happened: There was a struggle between a criminal and a cop. One person died because of heart disease during that struggle. Does that scenario sound familiar? It should because it’s the George Floyd scenario.

In that case, too, there was a struggle between a criminal and a cop, with the criminal, rather than the cop, dying from serious heart disease (exacerbated by the struggle involved in resisting arrest and the effects of massive quantities of fentanyl). However, unlike Mendez, who had all charges dropped, Derek Chauvin, who meticulously followed police procedures, rots in jail, where he was recently the subject of a murderous attack.

Aside from that inequity, there’s more. One would think that, given the evidence of the bodycam, Mendez could still be tried for resisting arrest, but that’s not what happened either. The D.A.’s officer concluded that Mendez’s inability to speak the language of the country he voluntarily and illegally invaded is a defense:

The 7th District State Attorney’s Office said in a statement, “Recent expert testimony regarding the defendant’s inability to comprehend the English language, his cultural background, and concerns about his intellectual capacity have raised significant issues to consider in the case.”

Do I need to reiterate that there is no country in which walking away from and then fighting with a police officer is acceptable conduct, no matter the language spoken? Moreover, this conclusion opens the door for people who don’t speak English, whether here legally or illegally, to do anything they want. It used to be that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Now it is.

But there’s still more. It seems that, in February, Mendez has sued Kunovich’s estate, as well as the other officer involved in Mendez’s arrest. His claim is that his inability to speak English is a disability, meaning that the officers violated his civil rights:

Attorneys representing Aguilar Mendez filed a new federal civil rights lawsuit Thursday, seeking compensatory damages from the incident as they claim the officers violated their client’s civil rights.

According to the legal filing, St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Michael Kunovich, who died as a result of the incident, and Lt. Jose Jimenez, another responding deputy, acted inappropriately in mistreating the migrant with multiple violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Florida Times-Union reported.

The lawyers specifically claim Aguilar Mendez’s limited ability to speak or understand English and Spanish constituted a disability. They allege he was also denied an interpreter at the scene and at the Sheriff’s Office, which would have allowed him to understand his Miranda rights.

I’m not a whiz at police procedurals, but it seems to me that the Miranda rights usually come after the cuffing, while Mendez’s violent response to the police preceded the cuffing. (And let me say, yet again, that in Mendez’s native Guatemala, you don’t resist arrest, either.)

As I said, you can bring your own comments to this. All I can say is that it doesn’t seem right to me.

Image: Virgilio Aguilar Mendez. YouTube screen grab.