Being an illegal alien can have its advantages — if you’re a criminal.
In our court system, it can lead to the dismissal of criminal charges against you, charges that would result in a penalty for the average American citizen.
Mecklenburg County Assistant District Attorney Stephen Ward says he regularly wastes time preparing cases only to show up to court and find out that the defendant he was prosecuting was an illegal alien and has been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“They swoop them up without so much as a ‘Do you folks mind?'” Ward says. “They take them and never tell us about it while I keep preparing for court.”
Because the deportations are triggered by bond proceedings and occur before conviction, many illegal alien criminals are being deported from the country without being tried on the criminal charges that led to their arrests or serving time for their crimes.
That might be okay if they couldn’t easily return to the country, but they often do. By then, the charges against them have often been dismissed and they return with a clean — or cleaner — criminal record.
It’s what was in the process of happening in the case of Jose C. Rivera, an illegal immigrant who is accused of raping three Charlotte women. Rivera was charged with felony breaking and entering, felony larceny and resisting a public official in June. By July, with the charges still pending, he was in a federal deportation facility in Atlanta, on his way out of the country, when authorities discovered an apparent DNA match in the Charlotte rape cases.
Ward says he’s “horribly frustrated” with the situation. While the district attorney’s office doesn’t keep statistics on how often it happens, Ward says it’s “often.”
“There are so many illegal immigrants,” Ward says. “We see it with DWIs and all sorts of crimes.”
When illegal alien criminals are whisked away by ICE, judges are unwilling to issue orders for arrest for failure to appear, since it wasn’t technically the defendant’s fault that he was unable to appear.
Ward says the district attorney could reinstate the charges if an illegal alien returned after deportation — but he has no way of knowing that illegal aliens have reappeared in the Charlotte area after deportation. The overwhelmed county court system lacks a mechanism to catch new charges and restart the dismissed ones.
“That’s what would have happened in this case,” Ward says of the felony breaking and entering charges against Rivera.
ICE spokesman Richard Rocha says ICE deports illegal aliens like Rivera before they face the charges against them “in the interest of public safety.”
Rocha says the agency does this because it fears that illegal alien criminals will disappear once they are released on bond. Judges, prosecutors and court officials are apparently often unaware of the residency status of illegal aliens when they make bond decisions, another gaping gap in the court system.
“If he got out on bond and re-offended, imagine the public outcry,” says Rocha. “Who knows if he would show up for his court date? You don’t want them out roaming the streets.”
Rocha says that ICE decides whether or not to deport illegal alien criminals before they can be tried on their current charges on a case-by-case basis. If the charges were more serious, ICE would wait until after the illegal alien had served their sentence.
Unlike ICE, most people would probably consider the felony breaking and entering and larceny charges Rivera had racked up to be serious ones.
And as Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office Spokesperson Julia Rush points out, deporting illegal alien criminals before they can be tried and convicted on the charges against them leads to shorter criminal records. This in turn decreases the likelihood that they will be tried federally for the next batch of felonies they commit when they return from their deportation. While the plea deals and resulting sentences handed out for felonies in Mecklenburg County are often light, federal sentences are usually steep.
The situation has become more of a problem since the Sheriff’s office launched a program that automatically checks the residency status of foreigners in the jail. ICE often deports those the sheriff catches. Before the sheriff launched the new program, illegal aliens were simply churned back on the streets because no one could determine their residency status.
Rocha says that the district attorney’s office has the option to retain any illegal alien it wants to try. He questioned why the district attorney’s office hasn’t done so, saying the district attorney is made aware of the residency status of those they try. But Ward insists that district attorneys don’t find out the status of inmates until they are long gone. If there is a breakdown in the system, Rush also couldn’t point to exactly where it was.
So even pinning down who exactly is at fault for this hole in the system is difficult.
But what’s clear is that the system favors those who return to this country after being deported to find felony charges against them wiped off their records. When you consider that American criminals may be serving jail time on similar charges, the situation is maddening.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.
Lets face it, we obviously lost the war that we thought we won in 1848. I can tolerate the ugly, costly and complex situation in Iraq but i cant tolerate the way the federal gov is handeling this issue. It is an undeniable joke!
I agree that the matter is very frusterating and not just within the justice system (or lack thereof.)
There are so many more negatives to allowing illegal aliens to stay than benefits that you cant even compare the two. Ill pay an exta quarter for a bunch of grapes or some corn. The millions and millions of tax payers money spent by each state on housing them in jail (the few that arent let go), the over burden school system the over burden hospitals, medicade and the list goes on.
We need to enforce existing laws, create or increase penalites for laws in place that dont have a deterant, start an illegal alien datbase and finger print every one that is arrested (evewn if they are deported, cause they’ll be back), and we need to secure the border with a fencem, technology state and national guard troops.
I like Gulianni but he lost my Republican vote soley becasue of his stance on the issue. He has recently changed his tune since the voice of the America (US Citizens that is) finally cried out loud enough not to be ignored anymore. I dont have confidence in his new policy.
The problem is that the ACLU is extreamly active in their far left agenda and the conservatives need more groups to go on the offensive as often and vigorous as they do.
It appears that our civil servants have communications issues. I volunteer to teach a team building class if I am allowed to terminate those who fail. Seriously, citizens are dying because our employees cannot cumbaya.
GIULIANI WANTS TO PROTECT ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!
“Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens,” Giuliani said at the time. “If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city. You’re somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair.”
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3459498&page=1
http://www.teamtancredo.org
Exactly! Wonderin why more articles aren’t printed on this subject. If it was you and I we would be locked up without hesitation!
The DA’s and judges should be hel accountable for allowing these aliens to be released with serious charges pending.
What is ICE to do when a child molestor posts bond on his charges? If ICE lets him hit the streets and the alien harms another child, then columnists would complain that ICE knowingly released an illegal alien child molestor into the streets.
Americans are second class citizens without a doubt. The massive, mindboggling amounts money spent in Iraq, on illegal immigration, and on every other thing that does NOT,help Ameircans or the American nation,could have been used for America and Americans. It could have been used to repair the infrastructure of this nation of collapsing bridges, corroded pipes and crumbling highways, from one end of the nation to the other. It could have provided universal healthcare for every American man, women and child. How stupid we have become for not holding our “representatives accountable is beyond comment.
The root cause of this problem, it seems, is that there is no will among federal authorities to uphold the rule of (immigration) law, to the extent that prompts some critics to conjecture an anti-enforcement conspiracy.
Every illegal alien who re-enters unlawfully the U.S. after being deported commits a felony violation according to the federal law, so those who got off the hook for criminal offenses and deported should end up in jail upon their illegal return and not free with “clean record”. In some cases, federal courts, rather than upholding the rule of law, will obstruct any meaningful enforcement of it. Here is a link to an example of this latter kind. Read for yourself and get angry:
http://www.geocities.com/readerswrite/commentaries/Federal_supremacy.htm
I do empathize with our poor court system..unable to handle the overwhelming crime problem. How can they sleep at night?! So many of us local boys have taken to helping out. Nowadays when we catch an intruder, or somebody starting trouble, or if somebody looks like they would start trouble, or…well…we just shoot em and feed the fish. If they don’t exist, then there’s no crime right?. getting a bit worried with the lower lake levels right now though..having to work in deeper water to make sure nuthin turns up.
Illegal aliens who have entered without inspection (snuck across the border) can be jailed for 6 months. ICE should be required to hold all illegals for that period of time while they run their prints and DNA through all the city, county, state and federal data banks looking to match the illegals with their crimes. In Los Angeles, most of the outstanding warrants for homicide are for presumed illegal aliens who have fled the area. We would like to be able to solve those crimes and bring closure to the families of the victims.
The federal government should be required to jail all alien criminals for their entire jail sentences. Since the feds let them in, they should pay the costs — they can take the monsy out of the pay, bonuses, pensions and perks of the political class. If that is not enough to cover the costs, well, then take it out of the hides of those companies who are caught with illegals working for them. Call it a “foreign criminal encarceration tax” and apply it to all companies who hire foreigners instead of Americans. If you want less of something, tax it! That should put a big dent in the problem.
I think the federal government should start jails like Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County jail in Arizona. All illegal aliens caught in the U.S will be sent there and not immediately returned until their sentence is completed for entering the United States. If they come back and are caught again, stiffer punishment. This all meets the existing laws.
Coming from the state that is advertised as the easiest state to get false documents or driver’s licenses (for that matter) NC, I propose the following solution to stop illegal immigration.
1) Businesses stop hiring illegals. It does not take a genius to figure out if someone cannot speak English, then there is something wrong. Red flag, even if you cannot tell false documents. check the documents, if in doubt. Huge fine on those found guilty of hiring illegals.
2) Stop Feeding them. Stop handing out food stamps. These are government operated agencies who cannot tell the difference as to who is an illegal…shame on you!! Again, if you cannot speak English…Red flag!
3) Stop housing them. Stop renting to illegals. You rent to them, you get hefty fine.
If you take away the jobs, housing and food…they will not stay.
I have no problem with immigrants coming to this country but do it by our laws. I have friends who came from Russia and became US citizens. They WANTED to speak English and made every effort to speak better.
I resent like heck when my state representative has a hispanic link on his website…and Sen. Burr, I’ll do everything to get you out of office.
The solution is to cut supplies.