Thread: He was 'a serious threat' — but no one stopped him

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 09,00.html

He was 'a serious threat' — but no one stopped him


By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News
June 11, 2006

Three weeks before Kailya Goodman turned 10, her father was killed when an illegal immigrant plowed a sport utility vehicle into his motorcycle on a Thornton street on July 1, 2004.

Justin Goodman of Denver bled to death on the side of the road. He was 31.

On her 10th birthday, just at the moment Kailya Goodman seemed to be enjoying herself, she looked up at her mother and spoke. The words broke her mother's heart all over again.

"She said, 'I wish my dad was here,'" Christine Goodman recalled through tears. "That's the toughest part of this, for Kailya to live without her dad, not having him here for all her important times."

The man convicted of the hit-and-run that killed Kailya's father was Roberto Martinez-Ruiz, who had come to Colorado illegally from Mexico. He had a record of arrests in Colorado on charges of drunken driving, hit-and-run and other misdemeanors that spanned almost a decade, court records show.

Not once was his name turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE officials told a TV reporter — not until the accident that killed Goodman.

"We have that level of criminal right in our hands, and we're just letting them go," said Carol Vizzi, Justin Goodman's mother.

None of Martinez-Ruiz's previous crimes had risen to the level that gets the attention of ICE agents.

About half the people ICE deported last year were criminals. The rest were solely immigration-law violators. That left people such as Martinez-Ruiz in the middle — criminals, but not bad enough for ICE to detain and deport.

"Roberto Martinez-Ruiz was a serious threat and no one stopped him," Goodman's mother said. "There's a big hole in the net in terms of the category he falls into."

In contrast, Martinez-Ruiz's relatives — his brother and sister-in-law, small-business owners who employed Martinez-Ruiz's wife as a janitor — never had any serious brushes with the law.

ICE agents would not have normally gone after such illegal immigrants: They had steady jobs, owned homes, paid taxes and were keeping out of trouble.

But when Martinez-Ruiz was arrested, a local TV reporter began asking questions about his family's immigration status. The result: ICE arrested Martinez-Ruiz's wife, brother and sister-in-law at his preliminary hearing in state court.

Prosecutors had to intervene to keep ICE from deporting them because they needed their testimony to convict Martinez-Ruiz. That wasn't the first or the last time such a thing has happened, local prosecutors say.

Martinez-Ruiz was sentenced to 161/2 years in prison for crimes that included leaving the scene of an accident involving a death, tampering with evidence and contributing to the delinquency of a minor (for encouraging his daughter and niece to lie to police for him). He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Martinez-Ruiz's family disappeared into the shadows after the trial. They have not been deported or even found again, Vizzi said she has been told. ICE officials declined to comment on this case, even though they commented to the TV reporter initially.

The Vizzi family has urged local officials to file charges against Martinez-Ruiz's family for aiding a criminal, lying to officials about his crime and using false documents to obtain a home loan. So far, that has not happened.

Vizzi and her two brothers have started a Web site (www.victimsofillegalaliens.org) and a nonprofit group to publicize the plight of victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

The brothers say ICE officials have told them they need criminal charges to be filed against Martinez-Ruiz's family before they can go after them.

But Vizzi believes ICE shouldn't have to choose between pursuing criminals or nabbing immigration violators.

"I can't make that choice," she said. "I say go after them all."

Vizzi, 52, says her fervor is not fueled by prejudice. She points out that she lived and ran a business for three years in Mexico. She returns there annually. And she is the daughter of an Italian immigrant.

"This isn't about hate," Vizzi said. "This is about love — the love of a child I lost. When we lost Justin, we lost everything."

Justin Goodman's widow said the fix for the immigration system must start with stemming the flow of illegal immigrants across the border. But her focus is not on the border hundreds of miles away. It's much closer to home.

"I want people who are benefitting from illegal immigration to understand the money isn't worth it, and our children and husbands and families' lives are more important," Christine Goodman said.

"Employers shouldn't be hiring them because when they do, they're supporting them to be here and slip through the system. I know not all immigrants are criminals. But if there were stronger enforcement, Justin would still be here, and Roberto would have been deported long ago."

frankl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5091

How sad. My local paper (N&O, Raleigh, NC - local liberal rag) keeps printing illegal immigrant human interest stories (sob stories) that expound on the hardships and suffering of illegal immigrants that are forced to hide in the shadows. Seldom do they print anything that sheds a negative light on our illegal immigrant problem or the suffering encountered by U.S. citizens at the hands of illegals.