Actually, it went more like this:
The Denver Post ran a front page story about this "honor student" (Sunday edition, I believe) and his family, presumably at the request of and in collaboration with the local Mexican Consulate. If I remember correctly, the point of the article was to drum up support to allow financial aid and/or in state tuition for illegal aliens -- something along those lines.
After seeing this on the front page of the Denver Post, one of Tancredo's constituents contacted him and inquired as to why this family could openly flaunt their illegal status in this manner.
Congressman Tancredo doing what Congress people are supposed to do researched the issue by calling the director of the local INS office and asked about the policy of the INS in matters such as this. He also asked general questions such as "If I walked up to you on the street and told you that I was in this country illegally, would I be deported?". Tancredo made no formal or informal request that this student be deported.
The major Denver and Boulder papers which are owned by same company started a smear campaign against Tancredo accusing him of hiring illegal aliens indirectly through a contractor. The papers unembarrassed themselves and came out looking like idiots because they could not produce any documentation that the "undocumented workers" ever existed, and, as far as I know, they still haven't produced that documentation. The last I heard, the contractor was contemplating a suit against the papers.
Tancredo went on several talk radio shows and took calls about this -- unfavorable calls were not screened out on the shows I heard. He was also interviewed at least once on one of the cable news channels. If he declined interviews by the Denver Post, etc. that would be understandable, IMO -- I don't know if he did or not.
If the student didn't want to be deported and had the tiniest respect for our laws, he wouldn't have flaunted his illegal status in the way he did. Apparently, the arrogant Mexican Consulate felt pretty secure in thinking that Mexican citizens have immunity where our immigration laws are concerned -- and that is a big part of the problem.
Given that the Post had their collective hatchet sharpened & bullseye on Tancredo's back, his reaction to refuse interviews w/ the paper still smacks of a certain arrogance. He inserted himself directly into the controversey & then when the heat gets turned up, he announces that he's taking the ball and going to play w/ the kids on the other block. OK behavior for a private citizen, but it's not OK, IMO, for a guy who draws his paycheck from the taxpayers. I would probably view this a little differently if he refused to talk to the LATimes or the WaPO about it, but the Denver Post is one of Tancredo's local newspapers & this particular story was emerged w/in the proximate area of his district.
As I see it, on one hand Tancredo is a stickler for the rules, an often admirable trait. When he announced his intention to break the term limits pledge he had made to voters, he essentially said that rules (albeit a self-imposed one) don't apply to himself and that begs questions that go directly to his personal integrity. Moreover, as I understand it, term limits was an issue that he was fervent about as the head of the Colorado Term Limits Coaliton & term limits was a central issue in his '98 first-term campaign for congress. Obviously, the voters in his district can enforce his 3-term pledge in November. Or not. The point of this is that when his name is being touted as a write-in candidate for president, his behavior goes under the national microscope & his credibility & integrity are justifiably questionable.
As per the student, Jesus Apodaca, affair--regardless of who the instigators were, the question still boiled down to the debate over in-state tuition vs out-of-state tuition, the difference in costs being quite significant--over $5000 per semester. As a personal aside, w/in 7 months of moving to Wisconsin, I was granted the resident tuition rate when I returned to college--after furnishing a letter from my husband's employer that the move to WI was a employment related transfer. OTOH, kids like Apodaca don't qualify for a resident rate regardless of how long they've been a resident of a state. It's a sticky area--obviously we don't want rich kids coming to the US explicitly for higher education & qualifying for resident tuition rates but, at the same time, do we want to maintain the financial bar at such a high level that we effectively prevent kids like Apodaca from accessing the means to be productive members of society? Some would answer that question in the affirmative; I would not, again stating that it's a difficult issue to sort through.