Check out the Texas Rainmaker’s post on the recent drunk driving crash in North Houston that killed two women. Turns out the driver was an illegal alien who had 3 prior DUI convictions. TTR says:
Is anyone in immigration and law enforcement awake anymore? Consider the deaths of these three innocent people yet another tragic wake up call.
Back when HPD officer Rodney Johnson was murdered in cold blood by an illegal he’d cuffed and put in the back of his prowler certain local “immigration activists” and liberal apologists made cutting remarks to the effect that his murderer’s immigration status had nothing to do with the crime nor anything to add to the immigration debate.
Both of these lines of attack were blatantly false, of course, but they illustrate how the debate over immigration is steered away from matters of fact.
Now it’s happened again. As TTR points out, Ignacio Gomez-Gutierrez is yet another example of Houston’s complete failure to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants. From the Chronicle:
His third DWI arrest, which would normally become a felony, was reduced to a misdemeanor, a move the mayor’s crime victims advocate calls a “pivotal moment” that ultimately led to the deaths of Maria Ortiz, 49, and her 18-year-old daughter, Vanessa, who was five months pregnant.
Records also show Gomez-Gutierrez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was never deported after serving his time in jail in 2002, 2004 and 2005.
3 strikes and you’re out, right? I guess that rule only applies if you’re an American citizen. If you’re illegal you can do as you please in Houston.
One important question is this: Who was the judge in Gutierrez’s most recent case, the one who decided to allow the 3-time loser to cop to a misdemeanor? It seems to me that the answer to this question should be on the front page of the Chronicle every day for the next month. Hard questions should be asked and answers demanded.
Fool the judge once, shame on you. Fool her twice, shame on the judge. Fool the fool a third time and someone needs to be kicked out of office.
The relatives of the dead women know this:
The victims’ family members and others say Gomez-Gutierrez should never have been back on the road in the first place.
“We are so angry,” said Sylvia Flores, 28, whose mother and younger sister died in the accident. “If everyone had done what they were supposed to do, they would still be alive. I don’t want (Gomez-Gutierrez) to slip through the cracks again. He’s just been given a slap on the wrist. No wonder he did it again.”
But why are even the victims’ family members thinking in terms of the killer’s driving privileges, not his presence in the U.S.? Ms. Flores is correct in saying that Gutierrez should have been in jail instead of out smashing the life out of innocent women and unborn babies. However, given that he was not in jail the remaining fact is that Gutierrez had no business being in the U.S. at all.
I would hope that this will not be lost on the Latino community as they mourn the loss of these women and that Hispanics will finally wake up and realize that illegals from south of the border are not necessarily their friends simply because the illegals look and talk like them.
LULAC and the other spin-doctors will undoubtedly play a merry tune to distract people. But this time there’s nothing to stop us from seeing the truth. This country’s immigration policy is utterly broken and we have to ignore the voices around us who say otherwise.
Update:
Assistant Harris County district attorney Colleen Barnett was responsible for allowing Gutierrez to copy to the misdemeanor:
He might not have chosen the felony probation out of fear of deportation, Barnett said, adding sometimes defendants think it’s “easier to sit out the jail time.”
Way to go, Ms. Barnett. Knowing all you had to do to get a 3-time loser kicked out of the U.S. was do your job you still chose not to. Inspiring.