TN: Update on TSU student killed by drunk illegal immigrant

NASHVILLE, Tenn.- Tennessee State University will hold a memorial service Wednesday for the student who was killed over the weekend in a car accident.

Jocelyn Gardiner, 22, died Saturday after her car was broad-sided by Victor Benitez. Witnesses said Benitez, who according to police was drunk at the time, never touched his brakes as he slammed into the TSU senior's car.

The service for Gardiner will be held in the Floyd Payne Campus Center on the TSU campus. The service begins at noon and is open to the public.

Victor Benitez, 24, was charged with vehicular homicide for running a red light at the intersection of Old Hickory Boulevard and Nolensville Road, killing 22-year-old Joycelyn Gardiner. Benitez might have been in the country illegally.

The Mexican native's preliminary hearing on the charge is Thursday morning.

Police said Benitez was driving without a license and that he didn't have paperwork verifying that he was in the United States legally.

"They learned that he is a suspected illegal immigrant, thus, a federal hold was placed on him so he cannot make bond," said Don Aaron, Metro police spokesman.

A two-month old program has expedited that process. The 287(g) immigration enforcement program allows Davidson County Sheriff's deputies to identify, process, and detain undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.

"It's gone very smoothly," said Davidson County Chief Deputy Sheriff John Ford. "Our numbers have been kind of where we expected them to be."

Over the last six weeks, 631 of the inmates booked into the jail were foreign born. About 75 percent of them were placed in what's called removal proceedings.

That could mean one of three things. First, they were issued an immigration bond.

"With an immigration bond, someone has to drive to Memphis to place a 100 percent bond, so if they put a $10,000 bond on you, someone has to put $10,000 in the federal government's hand for you to be released," Ford said.

The rest of the foreign-born inmates were detained without bond and the rest were released but ordered to show up in a Federal Immigration court in Memphis.

No one knows just how many of those illegal immigrants are driving four hours to Memphis to show up in court.

In the Gardiner case, the driver who hit her has a lengthy criminal record. Family and friends are wondering what if this new program were in place years ago, could it have stopped what happened over the weekend?

"Something would have happened," Ford said. "He would have been identified by our officers, and some process would have been initiated."

But, for now, the focus is on the future.

With so many new cases heading to the Memphis federal court, there may be a new push to create a new immigration court in Nashville.

"It's very obvious to us that we should eventually have an immigration judge here, not only to speed up the process, but to keep it from backlogging," Ford said.

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Here the country loses a college student, by all accounts a bright, talented young woman who was deinfitely going places. The kind of person we so desperately need. Not only smart, articulate and motivated but it seems she was one of those people who was loved and respected by all who knew her.
Now her promising young life has ended- and why? Because no one in our government has the balls to stand up to the illegal aliens and their ethnic advocacy groups and say, "The safety of our American citizens is more important than any fictitious claim that you have a 'right' to be here. The wholesale slaughter has gone on long enough. The border will be secured immediately by any means necessary and you have 48 hours to get out of Dodge."