February 12, 2005

Victimizing Peter to Pay (For) Paco: The SCAAP Scam

By Terry Graham

Yet another American has died at the hands of an illegal alien with a long criminal record in the Denver metropolitan area, and his distraught family is asking why.

“How could [the illegal alien] possibly escape justice this many times and be put out on the street where he was able to kill Justin?” asks Carol Vizzi, the victim’s mother.

Justin Goodman, 32, an American husband and father, died near a curb on July 1, 2004, after being struck on his motorcycle by a hit-and-run driver. Local investigators arrested 33-year-old Roberto Martinez-Ruiz.

Last week, Denver’s Channel 7 investigators revealed that, since 1996, Martinez-Ruiz, who has used six aliases, has been arrested for driving under the influence, failure to appear in court, violating probation, careless driving, driving with a revoked license and hit and run. Martinez-Ruiz has spent time in jail and, in 2000, his license was revoked for five years.

But, although Martinez-Ruiz is an illegal alien who used fake ID, and despite the many arrests, jail time, and court appearances, 7NEWS confirmed that no local law enforcement agency, prosecutor or judge ever contacted federal immigration officials to have him deported. (Family Of Hit-And-Run Victim Angry That Illegal Immigrant Was Never Deported, February 8 2005)

Sound familiar? Well, it does to me. When Mexican citizen Julissa Molina Soto assaulted me last July at First Data/Western Union’s open-borders “immigration reform” Forum in Denver, I immediately asked the Denver detective assigned to my case to determine her immigration status. He replied, "We don’t do that."

Despite my repeated requests, the detective also refused to contact the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

He later told me that Molina Soto’s lawyer, Jeff Joseph, assured him that Molina Soto is in the US legally.

No shinola, Sherlock!! Let me guess—did Joseph, who heads the Denver Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), also say that Molina Soto was innocent of the charges against her?

(She is due back in court on March 11, 2005.)

When Denver’s District Attorney Office took my case, I asked (and asked) that they contact ICE. Finally, my Victim Advocate called ICE, months after the attack. But she tells me she is not sure what ICE will do.

In the meantime, a reliable source had told me ICE records indicated that my attacker held permanent resident alien [legal] status in the US for five years, and that she had pled guilty to a child abuse charge in the late 1990s. I promptly turned over the ICE information to the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

When a plea bargain was offered to Molina-Soto to serve 10 days in jail for assaulting me, the DA told me that, except for a child abuse charge, my attacker had no criminal record.

But I have discovered that Molina-Soto has used at least five names while in the U.S. Were all five names checked to establish her criminal record? Had she committed crimes in Mexico prior to entering the US with her two children, allegedly illegally, nine years ago? Was she an illegal alien when she was charged with child abuse in Colorado?

These questions will never be answered if current law enforcement practices are followed.

And here’s the point: The detective told me it was not DPD’s policy to determine a suspect’s immigration status. [See Denver's Sanctuary Policy]

But Denver (and other jurisdictions) can and do determine immigration status quickly enough when they want to. The city for years has been reimbursed for costs of jailing illegal aliens through the Federal Government’s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP).

And in order to secure per capita SCAAP money, Denver must identify specific criminal aliens.

A damning internal audit completed in November 2003 for the City of Denver’s Department of Safety about its contract with Dallas-based Justice Benefits, Inc., a liaison to SCAAP for many cities/counties, revealed that from 7/28/98 to 12/31/02, Denver received $11,200,924 in SCAAP reimbursements for housing illegal aliens. JBI pocketed $2,368,344, although its contract was never put out to bid. Department Of Safety, Justice Benefits, Inc., Contract Compliance Audit, for the period July 28, 1998 through December 31, 2002.

The bottom line: there’s big money for bureaucrats in jailing criminal aliens. By not reporting and deporting them, but instead putting them through revolving-door jails, criminal aliens become a profit center.

Repeat offenders like Martinez-Ruiz are downright desirable.

Citizen victims pay the price—sometimes with their lives.

Patriotic politicians have tried to do something about the mounting illegal immigration scandal in Colorado. In early 2003, Colorado Assemblyman Don Lee introduced House Bill 1224, designed to block government acceptance of unverifiable, foreign ID such as the Mexican consular cards, with stiff penalties for violators.

But the bill was gutted when Tony Lombard, a lobbyist for the Denver and Colorado police protective associations, demanded it be amended to allow law enforcement officers to accept such bogus IDs with “immunity.”

Governor Bill Owens—who endorsed Colorado’s very own guide to illegal immigrants, pulling it from a state website only when I exposed him in VDARE.COM—approved the so-called "Secure and Verifiable Identity Documents Act."

Today, this law allows Colorado peace officers to accept unverifiable, insecure foreign ID.

How can Denver not drop a dime on a phone call to ICE when it is paying an outside contractor $2 million plus to push around SCAAP paperwork? Have any SCAAP-subsidized criminal aliens been reported to ICE and then deported?

My advice to Justin Goodman’s family: file an Open Records request to find out if and to whom SCAAP reimbursed the costs of jailing Roberto Martinez-Ruiz—before he was released to continue his Colorado crime spree.

And if you find out your son died for a sack of silver coins, tell the world...and sue.

Do it for Justin. Do it for Justice. Do it for America.

[Click here for information on how to report illegal and criminal aliens.]