The manhunt is over. Two illegal aliens accused of stabbing and robbing an off-duty New York Police detective are in custody after investigators tracked them to a basement in Lynn, Massachusetts, according to the Boston Herald.

Run through that sentence slow. Two men in the country illegally allegedly stabbed a cop. They ran north and holed up in somebody's basement in a Massachusetts city. The law caught up with them. Every link in that chain worked, which is more than you can say for the system that let them in to begin with.

The victim is an off-duty NYPD detective, stabbed and robbed, per the charges. Fugitives in the Northeast run north for a reason. The corridor is well worn, and suspects tend to stop where they figure nobody's looking too hard. Whatever anybody thinks of Massachusetts on that score, it didn't stop this arrest, and good on the investigators for it.

That's commentary on the region, not a claim about this case. The record shows investigators found them and nobody else got hurt. A manhunt that ends with cuffs instead of a standoff is a clean operation no matter how you score it. Credit where it's due.

A word on the terms, since the press keeps getting them wrong. These men are illegal aliens, meaning foreign nationals present in the United States without lawful status. That's the statutory language and it's the accurate language. They're also accused criminals, which is a separate matter and one the courts will sort out. You can be here illegally and still be presumed innocent of the stabbing until conviction. Anyone who tells you acknowledging one erases the other is arguing in bad faith, and I don't argue with bad faith, I laugh at it.

Now the part that matters going forward. Whether ICE has lodged detainers on these two hasn't been reported, but once the criminal case in New York runs its course, the proper stack is criminal punishment first, deportation after. A detainer gets lodged, the receiving jurisdiction honors it, and ICE takes custody at the prison gate instead of reading about the guy reoffending in another state eighteen months later. It's a simple handshake. Most of the country does it without complaint.

Watch how Massachusetts handles the back end of this one. If local officials cooperate, fine, that's the job. If somebody decides these two are too sympathetic to hand over after allegedly putting a knife in a detective, we'll be having a different conversation, and I'll be naming names.

The scoreboard: two illegal aliens accused of stabbing a cop, captured. Nobody else hurt in the arrest. A basement in Lynn with two fewer tenants. Good day for the good guys.