Dubious success in ICE turnaround
The Virginian-Pilot
© June 3, 2007
Last updated: 6:44 PM


Angelina Fabiano, age 7, said goodbye to her father for a final time last week. "Dear Daddy, I love you. You're a good daddy. I will always love you," she wrote to Kenosha County (Wis.) sheriff's Deputy Frank Fabiano Jr.

An illegal immigrant, with a long criminal record, is charged with gunning him down during a routine traffic stop.

Meanwhile in Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE, the federal agency charged with booting criminal illegals from the country, continues to blame local police for failing to notify them when suspected illegal immigrants were arrested for minor crimes. In the wake of an accident in which an illegal immigrant with a record of drunken driving and public intoxication allegedly killed two local teens, police from Virginia Beach to Newport News say ICE has never been interested in deporting illegals charged with relatively minor crimes.

That's old news, says ICE. Now that Virginia's law enforcement agencies are finally calling a hot line based in Vermont, says ICE, the agency is cracking down on the illegals with criminal records that they had missed in the past.

How can you tell who's telling the truth? Just read the rap sheet of the man charged with killing Angelina Fabiano's father.

In 2003, Ezequiel Lopez was arrested on a gun charge in Texas. He wasn't deported.

In 2003, he was arrested in Missouri for drunken driving. He wasn't deported.

In 2004, he was arrested in Wisconsin for domestic violence and jumping bail. He wasn't deported then either. An ICE spokesman told a Wisconsin TV station, "We can find no record of having had contact with this individual before."

So you can believe ICE, that it has always been willing to deport any criminal illegal brought to its attention. But to believe that, you have to believe that local police in Texas turn a blind eye to gun-toting illegal immigrants wandering their state. Missouri's police are indifferent to drunken illegal immigrants racing down their freeways. And Wisconsin police enjoy chasing illegal immigrant bail jumpers across their snow-covered plains. Oh, and Virginia police are exaggerating when they say that ICE wasn't much interested in responding to their calls.

But even if ICE wasn't aggressively doing its job before two teens needlessly died in Virginia Beach, they must be doing it now, right? A front-page Virginian-Pilot story says ICE is issuing twice as many orders to keep illegals in jail this year as it did last year. And that may reflect a step in the right direction.

But local law-enforcement officials say they still don't have the cooperation with ICE that is necessary to solve the problem.

In April, for instance, Virginia Beach police busted a document forgery ring run out of El Taco Tote, a weekends-only taco stand on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Among the evidence were files - including pictures and cell phone numbers - on more than 200 Mexicans who needed fake Social Security cards and other documents. Beach police officers wondered what kind of Mexicans need fake IDs? Maybe, just maybe, the files might lead to hundreds of illegal aliens.

ICE agents came out and inspected the files, then shrugged their shoulders and left. A local ICE agent refused to confirm or deny the incident. Maybe ICE isn't aware that using fake documents is a crime, or maybe the feds still aren't interested in doing their jobs.

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