Colorado: Sanctuary City, Sanctuary State?
http://polstate.com/?p=4934
CO: Sanctuary City, Sanctuary State?
Polstate Exclusive!
Over the past few weeks a steady drip of bad news for Colorado Democrats has grown into a wave of negative news items on illegal immigration.
This stories began on September 11 with a page 11 A Rocky Mountain News story on how Denver has been ignoring a 1987 state law requiring that all drunken driving suspects be fingerprinted and photographed. This policy has proven to be disastrous for Colorado since illegal immigrants often show no ID or fake papers. In one case a Denver judge had to set a man named Jose Castro-Cano free after it became apparent that there was no proof that he was the man who had been charged for a 2001 DUI.
In another incident Jose Luis Rubi-Nava was pulled over by the Denver Police earlier in the year. Rubi-Nava was recently charged in the gruesome dragging death where he allegedly tied a tow chain to his girlfriend and dragged her over a mile behind his truck. The entire legal system in Denver appears to collapse when officers face illegal immigrants as evidenced by what occurred when Rubi-Nava was arrested earlier this year:
Rubi-Nava, 36, was stopped April 21 at East Louisiana Avenue and South Hudson Street when the plates on the car he was driving came up on a national database as associated with a wanted party.
He produced a Mexican identification on which, an arresting officer noted, “I was able to see that the picture had been cut out and replaced” with Rubi-Nava’s picture.
He was charged April 22 with providing false identification, driving without a valid license and having no proof of insurance, but all three charges were dismissed April 27.
Rubi-Nava’s arrest report shows no mention of his being referred to immigration officials.
However, Whitman said he spoke independently Wednesday to both officers involved in the arrest, and they both told him they had done so.
“The cops say they wrote it as a ‘John Doe,’ above the perforation and not below the perforation. So it wouldn’t appear on all the copies of the tickets,” said Whitman.
As a consequence, the chief conceded, “There is no paper” to verify their account.
These policies, often referred under the umbrella of “sanctuary city” lead to disastrous consequences for 6 CU Doctoral students on July 1st.
On May 8th, 2006 an illegal immigrant named Jesus Salmeron-Alvarez was arrested in Denver on DUI charges. Unfortunately, no laws are in place that require illegal immigrant DUI suspects, even those de facto guilty, to be imprisoned or deported. In this instance the Denver Police simply took Mr. Salmeron-Alvarez to a detox facility where he simply walked out the next day.
On the night of July 1st Mr. Salmeron-Alvarez collided with a Metro Taxi carrying the before mentioned students at the intersection of 14th and Race. Mr. Salmeron-Alvarez fled the scene on foot, leaving his car. The Taxi, a type of mini-van, rolled over onto the sidewalk upon impact, pinning one of the students under it. Bystanders lifted the taxi off of him. Overall one student broke her neck in one place, another suffered a concussion, one walked away with only bruising, one broke her back in the lumbar region and one, Anita Mueller, was injured so severely that she spent the next month in the hospital. Sources tell me that the total cost of the accident stands at nearly 1 million dollars with over $300,000 alone spent on the treatment for Anita.
Anita broke her neck in two places, broke nearly every rib on the right side of her body, and broke her pelvis in four places. She spent several weeks at both Denver General and University Hospital. Due to the severity of her neck injury she had to have a surgery a month after the accident and she wore a halo for two months.
When the Denver Police went to look for Jesus Alvarez they were told that a Detective went to his home and “…was told by a neighbor that he (Mr. Alvarez) had packed up and left the night before.” The Denver Police believe that Mr. Alvarez most likely returned to Mexico.
Anita’s family was devastated on Sunday when the front page headline of the Denver Post read “Ritter helped Immigrants Stay.” Ritter, the Democratic candidate for Colorado Governor and the former DA of Denver, plea bargained 152 cases where illegal immigrants pleaded guilty to “agricultural trespass” to avoid deportation. Some of the charges involved were domestic violence, drug possession with intent to distribute, possession of cocaine and the sale and possession of heroin. Conservative critics of Ritter have been having a field day. Conservative Talk Radio host Hugh Hewitt went after Ritter over at Townhall.com:
What Ritter cannot explain away is a policy that purposefully used an obscure and absurd charge –trespass on agricultural land– as a means of keeping alien felons from being deported. Employing this tactic not only undermines the legitimacy of the prosecutor’s office –”agricultural trespass” is a “crime” completely different from the crimes the felons were charged with, not a “lesser included” offense– the purposeful frustration of the deportation laws kept criminals in the country who ought to have been sent to their home country.
For Colorado Gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez (R) illegal immigration may be the key to catching up to Ritter’s commanding lead in the polls. Beauprez supporters have been touting tomorrow’s Channel 7 debate as the Ritter’s Stalingrad, they claim that Bob will hit Ritter so hard on the illegal immigration issue, with some help from the local media, that the tide will finally turn.
For Anita Mueller and her family, Ritter’s “designer pleas” only reinforce their opinion that while some people get rich off of illegal immigration they have to bear the cost, both financially, emotionally and physically. Her father told me this earlier tonight “if Ritter wins we go from Denver being a Sanctuary City to Colorado being a Sanctuary State.”
