We don’t get to choose where we’re born. The fact that my mother gave birth to me in New Jersey is not my fault. I left when I was 17.

That was years ago, so I can’t pretend to understand why voters in the Garden State continue to send Robert Menendez back to the U.S. Senate.

It’s inexplicable. Almost anyone else would be better.

Because they re-elect him - he’s in his third term - the rest of America is stuck with this unsavory politician who was indicted in 2015 on federal corruption charges and also accused of traveling to the Dominican Republic to have sex with underage hookers. The corruption charges were dropped after a hung jury failed to convict him. The FBI investigated but was not able to substantiate the sexual accusations.

Still, he’s an odious individual. 

Earlier this week Menendez was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the bipartisan deal being negotiated on Capitol Hill to keep the federal government open.

Blitzer asked about reports that Democrats wanted to cap the number of beds allotted to ICE for the detention of illegals. That’s when Menendez declared that the Trump administration was padding the number needed by classifying illegal immigrants with DUI violations as “criminals.”

Here listen to this guy yourself:

Will someone please tell this Jersey genius that driving under the influence IS a crime in most states. (Not New Jersey, apparently. There, it’s a traffic violation.)

In most of the rest of the country DUI is considered a serious crime. One that claims more than 10,000 American lives a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Yet Menendez doesn’t believe DUI should be a deportable offense. Open the borders. Let ‘em drive drunk.

I’m positive  Ray Tranchant of Virginia Beach would disagree. Don’t tell him that a drunken illegal immigrant behind the wheel isn’t committing a despicable criminal act.

Ray lost his teenaged daughter Tessa and her best friend Ali Kunhardt in 2007 when an illegal immigrant with a BAC three times the legal limit slammed into the back of their car at a red light.

That double fatality was Alfredo Ramos’ third alcohol-related offense and his second DUI. He should have been deported after his first. Had that happened - had we been enforcing our immigration laws - those two Virginia Beach girls would be alive and Ramos would be driving drunk somewhere in Mexico. No longer our problem.

It’s unclear just how many Americans have been killed or injured by inebriated illegal immigrants. States don’t track the immigration status of drivers convicted of DUIs. 

They should. We have a right to know the magnitude of this deadly problem.

Here’s what we do know: According to the 2018 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations report, roughly 26,000 illegal aliens who were rounded up for immigration violations last year also had DUI violations. A total of 80,730 charges.

That’s a lot of recidivism. An alarming public safety threat.

Look, we’re stuck with homegrown hairballs who drive drunk.

But we shouldn’t have to tolerate intoxicated illegals on our highways.

Give ICE all the beds they need.