Between tears, the weepy headline in the always- sympathetic Los Angeles Times read:

“Man, in U.S. illegally, was arrested after dropping off a daughter at school.”

“Dropping off a daughter” is a liberal newspaper’s calculated way of compelling you to sink to your knees in abject pity for this sneak criminal.

Romulo Avelica-Gonzales, 49- year-old father of two, could be deported as soon as Monday.

Understandably you can feel sorry for his family but this is what happens when you marry a criminal.

Romulo’s wife and others have known, as well as ICE, that this illegal alien has been living a lie for decades.

Flaunting the law, Romulo the Illegal Alien was 24 years old when he brazenly tiptoed out of his native Mexico into our land in 1992.

No Boy Scout, Romulo the Illegal Alien was arrested and convicted twice after his arrival – for driving drunk and for receiving stolen car tags.

Hardly a shock.

Somehow, Romulo the Illegal Alien evaded being kicked out of our country for those crimes.

Millions of Romulo’s luckier fellow criminal illegal aliens remain free to clutter and steal from legal Californians – in Culver City, a sanctuary city, and elsewhere.

Liberals, who divorced precision in communications decades ago, stagger, predictably, when asked to describe the new-fangled name for hideouts for illegal aliens.

Just as liberals have lied about “global warming” and been forced to substitute the nutty phrase “climate change” for “global warming,” they needed a respectable fake term for hideouts.

“Sanctuary city” was the winner – or the loser.

Pleasantly vague, like leftism.

With Romulo the Illegal Alien and Culver City’s tactically clouded status as a sanctuary city in mind, I asked a woman who has one of the Westside’s leading attorneys for two decades to define sanctuary city.

“No,” she said quickly. “I have no idea what ‘sanctuary city’ means to anybody.”

A sure sign the left’s deceptive fool-the-peasants strategy is working.

When the Justice Dept. used the term “illegal alien” in a press release, the perhaps aptly named Todd Slowik of the Chicago Tribune burst his favorite blood vessel.

Flashing naivete, he actually wrote: “The phrase ‘illegal alien’ plays into assumptions that immigrants living in this country without proper documentation are criminals.”

The real world believes they are criminals.