Illegal Immigrant Accused of Stabbing VA Teen Should Have Been Deported Months Before
by Tony Lee 22 Aug 2013, 7:30 AM PDT
breitbart.com
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An illegal immigrant accused of brutally murdering a teenager in Virginia in 2010 should have been deported three months before he stabbed the victim 13 times and left her to die in a ravine.
Illegal immigrant Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia has admitted to killing Vanessa Pham, 19, after he begged her to give him and his infant daughter a ride to the hospital while he was high on PCP.
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According to his account, Blanco-Garcia was hallucinating while high on PCP he had bought earlier in the day. He thought Pham was going to do him and his one-year old daughter harm when she accidentally made a wrong turn while taking the strangers to the hospital. He then "took out a butcher's knife" from his backpack and stabbed her 13 times. Pham crashed her car into a ravine while she was being stabbed; her dead body was later discovered.
Blanco-Garcia, though, should never have been on the streets.
According to a report, the "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was notified of Blanco-Garcia’s 2010 misdemeanor for public intoxication and planned to file paperwork to take custody of him." But Blanco-Garcia "was released by local authorities on personal recognizance before he could be fingerprinted based on the low-level nature of the charge."
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Blanco-Garcia reportedly spent four hours at an adult detention center. According to ICE, he "entered the United States legally in 2002 with a visa but stayed past the six-month period for which it was authorized."
After police were stumped for nearly two years in their investigation of Pham's murder, a break in the case came when Blanco-Garcia was arrested for stealing three bottles of champagne from a grocery store in McLean, Virginia in 2012.
A spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform said this should be a "wake-up call" for the public about what can happen when ICE "doesn't send the paddy wagon."
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Blanco-Garcia has pleaded not guilty to the charge of premeditate murder. A search of his computer found that he had been tracking the progress of the investigation for two years.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...-Before-Murder
WashPost's Jouvenal Still Refusing to Note Convicted Murderer's Illegal Immigrant Sta
WashPost's Jouvenal Still Refusing to Note Convicted Murderer's Illegal Immigrant Status
By Ken Shepherd | August 23, 2013 | 11:57
newsbusters.org
Yesterday evening a northern Virginia jury convicted Julio Blanco-Garcia, an illegal immigrant with a history of scrapes with law enforcement, of first-degree murder in the July 2010 stabbing death of Vanessa Pham. The 19-year-old victim was giving Blanco-Garcia a ride to a local hospital when he killed her in a fit of PCP-fueled paranoia.
The Washington Post's Justin Jouvenal has been covering the trial and has repeatedly failed to note Blanco-Garcia's status as an illegal immigrant. Today's 22-paragraph Metro section front-pager was no exception. It's not like this is not public knowledge. As Whitney Rhodes of the AOL-owned Patch.com news website noted on December 15, 2012:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Friday the man accused of murdering 19-year-old Vanessa Pham is in violation of immigration law.
ICE placed a detainer on suspect Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia, 27, on Thursday, the day he was arrested and charged with Pham's 2010 murder. They released the following statement on Friday
"On Dec. 13, the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, which consists of U.S. Marshals deputies and inspectors, Fairfax County Police detectives and sheriff's deputies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Washington, DC Fugitive Operations Unit officers arrested Julio Blanco-Garcia, a citizen and national of Guatemala, in Vienna, Va. on a homicide warrant issued out of Fairfax County, Va. ERO officers placed a detainer on Julio Blanco-Garcia after it was determined that he was in violation of U.S. immigration law."
The detainer requires Fairfax County Police to notify ICE before releasing Blanco-Garcia. ICE will then investigate whether he fits the requirements to be removed from the country.
Blanco-Garcia will complete his criminal trial before ICE takes any action, Nicole Navas, ICE public affairs spokesperson said.
To be fair, back in December, Jouvenal himself did note that ICE officials revealed Blanco-Garcia was in the country illegally, and that he has a prior conviction on a misdemeanor charge, but Blanco-Garcia's illegal immigrant status has not been noted in more recent reporting:
Immigration officials disclosed Friday that Blanco-Garcia was a Guatemalan national who was in the country illegally. Local court records showed a misdemeanor shoplifting conviction in Fairfax County this year but not an extensive criminal background.
The Washington Post has a history of obscuring or omitting the illegal immigrant status of perpetrators of deadly criminal acts. In August 2010, my colleague Tim Graham noted how the paper obscured the illegal immigration status of one Carlos Martinelly-Montano, a serial drunk driver in northern Virginia charged in a fatal DUI incident which took the lives of some local nuns.
A lot of newspaper readers just scan the headlines quickly and choose only a few stories to read, even on the front page. Newspapers are often accused of tabloidish, exaggerated headlines. But sometimes, they do the opposite, with duller headlines that seem designed not to inform -- or offend.
The front page of Tuesday's Washington Post carried the headline "Va. driver had record of DUIs before fatal crash." Here's what it could have said: "Illegal alien had record of DUIs before fatal Sunday morning crash killed nun." The Post also bland-ified the headline inside the paper: "Driver had DUI record before fatal crash in Va." The caption for Carlos Montano on page A-12 also avoided his illegal status: "Carlos Montano, 23, is charged in the crash."
The story itself by Jennifer Buske and Paul Duggan didn't avoid the issue, so why would the headline writers try to dull down the story?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-she...rs-illegal-imm
