It happened again last week. An illegal alien with a criminal record that included four previous felony convictions who had been deported from the United States sneaked back into California and committed a cold-blooded crime.

Police reports say that when Oceanside (Calif.) Police Officer Tony Zeppetella, 27, stopped Adrian George Camacho for a traffic violation, Camacho pulled out a gun and shot Zeppetella. Camacho then pistol-whipped the injured Zeppetella before shooting him again with the officer's own gun and killing him, according to witnesses.

Camacho, 28, a documented gang member, had repeatedly crossed our open southern border.

In December 2002, Saul Morales-Garcia, alias Javier Duarte Chavez, shot Las Vegas Police Officer Enrique Hernandez six times following a foot chase.

Hernandez, 27, survived the attack, but the alien died from bullet wounds suffered in a shootout by Las Vegas police when he was cornered less than a hour after shooting Hernandez. The 24-year-old alien who shot Hernandez had previously been deported, but had illegally re-entered the United States.

Officer Zeppetella had served six years in the Navy and officer Hernandez had served eight years in the Marines. Zeppetella left a wife and infant child. Friends of both officers said they each had shared the same childhood ambition to be a policeman.

The men accused in both shootings were aliens who had been deported for previous crimes but easily returned illegally to commit more crimes. How many policemen will die because of the U.S. government's failure to stop illegal entry into the United States?

In June, Enrique Sosa Alvarez was arrested in San Jose, Calif., and charged with violently kidnapping a 9-year-old girl from her home, holding her captive for three days and repeatedly raping her before releasing her in a convenience store parking lot. A fingerprint check identified the girl's attacker as David Montiel Cruz, who had previously been convicted of auto theft.

Both names may be aliases and there is some question as to the accused rapist's country of origin, Mexico or Guatemala, San Jose police said.

While police don't know for sure who he is, we do know for sure that Cruz should have been deported after his earlier crime. The ease with which criminals change their names and come back across the U.S.-Mexico border shows the folly of accepting Mexico's matricula consular as valid identification.

Illegal alien Walter Alexander Sorto, 25, was repeatedly picked up for driver's license violations and for driving without valid automobile insurance, but Houston police were barred from reporting his residency status to federal authorities. In March, Sorto and a companion abducted, raped and killed three Houston women.

In 2002, Maximiliano Esparza raped and killed a nun from Bellevue, Wash. He had earlier been in a California prison and, following his release, the court ordered him deported. But the government didn't deport Esparza. It merely asked him to sign an I-210, a simple promise to depart, widely known as a "catch-and-release" document.

Only the brutal gang rape of a New York City woman in December by four illegal aliens has produced a government response. Three of those four criminals had long rap sheets from previous arrests and should have been deported.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims held a hearing in February to question officials from New York City and Houston about their "sanctuary" ordinances, which deter or even prohibit local police from reporting undocumented immigrants to federal authorities. New York City was under such an executive order issued in 1989 by then-Mayor Edward Koch. Continued...