You may have heard about an accident in southwestern Minnesota in which a school bus was rammed from the side by a van, killing four school children. After considerable hemming and hawing, it has been confirmed that the woman who was driving the van, Alianiss Morales, is an illegal alien. Morales has been booked on suspicion of criminal vehicular operation.

It's a tragic story, with elements that, as so often happens, make little sense. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Morales has a "Minnesota identification card" but does not have a driver's license. I'm not sure what a "Minnesota identification card" is, or how an illegal alien can get one. In 2006, Morales was convicted of driving without a license. It appears that, not only does Morales not have a license, she does not know how to drive a car:

Recalling that incident, Sandra Keding of Montevideo said in an interview Thursday that she had been reading the newspaper in her home that afternoon when she heard gravel flying.

"I stood up from the couch and looked out my window and this car was coming right toward my house," said Keding, 45. "The car hit the curb, came right up on my yard and stopped about 12 feet from the front of my house."

She recalled that Morales was driving and that she was "shaking all over and was a total wreck." When Morales tried to shift the automatic transmission on the blue Dodge Neon, she couldn't.

"She apparently didn't know how to drive the car," Keding said. "I had to get in and move it. She acted like she didn't know how to shift."

Police arrived and ticketed Morales for driving without a Minnesota license.

As a result of that incident, Morales was fined $182. It seems inconceivable that this prosecution could have been carried out without it coming to light that Morales is an illegal alien, but apparently no effort was made to deport her. She remained, it seems, an unguided missile on the state's highways until her path tragically collided with that of a school bus containing 28 children. Here is how a witness described the school bus accident:

The driver of the truck told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that he saw the van run the stop sign.

"I saw the maroon van run a stop sign, it blew over the railroad tracks and hit the bus, sending it sliding into me," James M. Hancock, 45, of Marshall, told the newspaper from his hospital bed in Sioux Falls, S.D. "The next thing I knew, they were hauling kids out and it was chaos."

It's a sad story, for Morales as well as the families of the dead and injured children aboard the bus. But it is impossible to understand how anyone can try to justify the institutional refusal to enforce our laws that leads to such tragedies.

UPDATE: The Minneapolis Star Tribune has now also reported that Morales is an illegal alien. What is not clear is whether she is really Alianiss Morales. It appears that the "Minnesota identification card" that she carries in that name is a fake, and the woman has so far refused to disclose her real name. Authorities now say that they aren't certain whether the woman driving the maroon van is the same "Alianiss Morales" who was convicted of driving without a license in 2006. It seems likely that she is, and that in 2006 her "Alianiss Morales" identity was accepted by law enforcement authorities. But it's also possible that a different woman, who also couldn't drive, was using the same fake ID a year and a half ago.

By the way, possession of a Minnesota identification card by Morales, or whoever she is, means that she can vote.

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