Posted on 11/09/2006 4:50:24 AM PST by ruination
The man charged with driving drunk and causing the accident that killed two N.C. State University students and a 16-year-old outside Sanford last month is in the United States illegally and may be prosecuted for carrying fraudulent identification, an immigration official said.
Pastor Rios Sanchez, 55, is being held in the Lee County jail on $75,000 bail and a 48-hour immigration detainer after being charged with three counts of involuntary manslaughter and other offenses related to the head-on collision Oct. 27, according to law enforcement.
Helen Meghan Hughes, 22, and Jennifer Elaine Carter, 18, were pronounced dead at the scene. Hughes' stepbrother, Benjamin Richard Leonard, 16, also was in the wreck and later died at the hospital, N.C. Highway Patrol Trooper K.T. Hill said last month.
Though Sanchez had a residency card, investigators say they now believe it was a fake, said Tom O'Connell, the resident agent in charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
O'Connell said Sanchez was from the Mexican state of Guerrero and that immigration officials don't believe he has ever legally been in the United States.
The U.S. attorney could decide to press additional charges against Sanchez for possessing counterfeit immigration papers, O'Connell said.
ICE placed an immigration detainer on Sanchez so that if he posts bond or otherwise faces release, immigration officials would have 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, to decide whether to take him into federal custody and start immigration proceedings.
If Sanchez were taken into immigration's custody now, he could be deported within a month, O'Connell said. Prosecution of state charges against Sanchez could take many months.
"We can't just hold him for eight months on an immigration charge while the state continues its case," O'Connell said. Instead, ICE usually waits until near the end of a prison sentence or other factor, and then takes the person into custody for deportation proceedings.
Sanchez was convicted of driving without an operators license in 2005, according to court records. He was charged with a similar misdemeanor in March and April. One of the charges was dismissed.
However, it's unlikely that those brushes with law enforcement would have flagged him as a possible illegal immigrant, officials said.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of traffic citations of people who are illegal immigrants, and as a practical matter ICE is not notified of each one of these," said Tom Lock, district attorney for Lee, Harnett and Johnston counties.
This is going to be repeated thousands of times.
As I drive around the Prince William area in Northern Virginia, for the last 6 months or so every major accident I've seen on the road ALWAYS has a "person of suspicious legal status" standing near one of the cars involved.
Am I racist? Nope, just observant.
Gee, I could have sworn that the drunk driving the wrong way on an interstate, killing my friend and her fiance, was a normal white American male. Since this doesn't fit the storyline, however, he must have been a Mexican illegal.
How could you possible determine a person is of suspicious legal status by driving by?
Did you hear them speak with an Irish brogue? Did they look to be of hispanic ancestry? Were they reading a foreign language newspaper while waiting for the police and ambulance?
I'm all for booting out the illegals; we have tons here in Westchester County. But I can't tell from looking or listening if the kid is an illegal Irish immigrant living on McClean ave in Yonkers or the Bronx, or a kid at the college I work at (founded by Irish Christian Brothers) on a student visa.
We have a large longstanding hispanic population (Puerto Rican, Mexican, south American, Cuban ancestry). My Spanish (learned in school, not from my Puerto Rican grandparents) isn't good enough to discern the dialect and regional accents. I couldn't tell by listening who might be a recent immigrant, and whether he is legal or not.
You must be very talented to be able to make this distinction.
except real soon he will be a newly amnesty granted drunk driver and the penalty won't change at all
Fortunately we have an abundance of Americans. The 'Open Borders' policy and the need for these hard working undocumented workers takes priority over the sovereignty of the United States and the safety of its citizens. /sarc.
It'd help to throw out the Dem governor.
As a practical matter???
Well, as long as it wasn't the Bush twins who died, it doesn't matter.
Also, there is no profit in ticketing illegals. They will just disappear. Americans die because traffic tickets are about revenue, not safety.
Ma'am, with due respect, if the person to whom you're speaking, minors excluded, cannot engage you in simple conversational English, they have a 95% chance of being in the United States ILLEGALLY because the majority of VISA interviews conducted by US Consular's offices are conducted in English.
Last week my buddy's daughter's car was hit in the rear by a drunk illegal Mexican (luckily she was unhurt).
Because it happened on the freeway which was jammed up due to another accident up ahead, the guy was hemmed in and couldn't run away. He was arrested almost immediately.
But what happens to these illegals? Can they be sentenced to prison or do they just get a free trip back to Mexico for another lap thru the process?
Another family pays the high cost of cheap labor. If they will not obay out immigration laws they dang sure will not obey our traffic ones!!!
Hmmm - in the California farm town I used to live in, they'd usually just haul a** on foot!
In NC, what happens depends whether they'll vote Democrat...;-)
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