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August 18, 2017 4:10 PM

DENVER (CBS4) The driver who struck and killed a young woman in downtown Denver last fall was sentenced on Friday.

Norlan Estrada Reyes was behind the wheel when he struck Karina Pulec at 13th and Broadway in October 2016. A friend she was walking with was also injured.

Norlan Estrada-Reyes (credit: Denver Police)

He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in June.

Karina Pulec (credit: CBS)

Estrada Reyes was identified as the driver after he crashed and then abandoned his white pickup truck just a few miles from the scene.

Karina Pulec (credit: Facebook)

Estrada Reyes, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, had been deported before, and was wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If he had been deported by ICE after the crash, there would have been no plea or sentencing.

Norlan Estrada-Reyes is suspected of driving this truck in a deadly hit-and-run (credit: Denver Police)

We worked very diligently with the federal authorities, with ICE, to ensure that he stayed here so that we could try him and get a conviction, said Williams.

A judge issued a $1 million bond that essentially kept Estrada Reyes behind bars during the court proceedings.

Estrada Reyes was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

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Illegal Immigrant Sentenced In Deadly Hit & Run Crash - CBS Local

ICE has arrested the driver of a tractor-trailer and a passenger Wednesday, after they were found with 23 illegal immigrants and 256 pounds of marijuana in the truck.

The arrests were made on Interstate 10 near the city limits by ICEs Homeland Security Investigations unit.

There were 18 adult males and two unaccompanied boys in the trailer; there were also two women and another man in the sleeper cabin. Three of the immigrants were from Guatemala and 20 were from Mexico. The immigrants are in federal custody pending disposition of the immigration cases, according to ICE.

In addition to the immigrants, agents also found 256 pounds of marijuana in the sleeper cabin.

The driver, Comothial Harper, 44 of Bainbridge, Ga., was arrested and charged with transporting illegal aliens for financial gain, investigators said. They added that the passenger, Gerardo Aguilar-Roque, 35, was arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

Despite there being no ventilation system, the immigrants all appeared to be in good health inside the trailer. According to court documents, agents with the El Paso Border Enforcement Security Task Force found the immigrants in the trailer hiding behind commercial boxes.

The people inside the trailer had a long trip ahead of them, and nothing assures us they would have arrived at their destination alive, said Waldemar Rodriguez, special agent in charge of HSI El Paso in a statement. HSI and its law enforcement partners will continue to work tirelessly to dismantle human smuggling networks operating on the border.

KFOX reported agents found the truck because of a traffic violation and outstanding warrant. Harper was paid anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to smuggle the immigrants, according to KFOX.

Ray Bogan is a Fox News multimedia reporter based in El Paso, Texas. Follow him on twitter: @RayBogan

The rest is here:
23 illegal immigrants, 250 pounds of weed found in semi-trailer in El Paso - Fox News

Friday, August 18, 2017 at 8:28 a.m.

Juan Cadavid a.k.a. Johnny Benitez is currently making headlines for his August 20 event in Laguna Beach titled America First! Electric Vigil, ostensibly held for the victims of "illegals" and refugees. Riding off the fumes of last weekend's events in Charlottesville, over 500 people are set to counter-protest what they're dubbing a "white supremacist rally," as Cadavid plans to speak alongside fellow alt-losers Baked Alaska and The Red Elephants founder Vincent James.

Cadavid maintains this event is about the message of America First and victims of illegals. Surely he'll have victims or their families come out to speak, or is he's at least in touch with them, right?

TheWeekly called up the two most prominent organizations that deal with the victims of crimes committed by undocumented folks: The Remembrance Project and the newly created Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime. We asked if their organizations had been in contact with Cadavid about the event, or received any proceeds from his recent Make Men Great Again event that he promised to victims and their families. And the answer is a big, fat NOPE.

"Please know that I nor [President] Tim Lyng have been contacted by Johnny Benitez," or any of his aliases, Remembrance Project National Director Maria Espinoza told the Weekly

"AVIAC has never received a contribution from Johnny Benitez," or his aliases, AVIACPresidentDon Rosenberg said. "He has never been in contact with me or Mary Ann Mendoza, AVIAC Vice-President, or to the best of my knowledge any other AVIAC board member."

When asked by the Weekly if he's been in contact with those two groups, or any families or victims of undocumented people, Cadavid said he "at one point exchanged messages" with Jamiel Shaw Sr. but that wasn't the point. "Individual victims aren't relevant," he told the Weeklyvia email. "The point is to highlight that there are many victims of immigration."

Having a vigil for a group of people and not inviting them, their families or even the groups that represent them? You'd figure Cadavid knows this is important considering he led a vigil for Kelly Thomas alongside Kelly's mother Cathy Thomas when he was was trying to pass himself off as a leftist.

As far as the donations from his Make Men Great Again event, Cadavid, claims he made no profit off of it, so there'll be no donations. He originally posted paperwork for the event, which listed the price tag at $4,095, butclaims the price jumped to $9,009 due to Old World making him rent out the entire restaurant and hire 14 armed guards after alleged leftist threats to Old World Huntington Beach. Rather than switch venues for a cheaper price, he went through with the event because he didn't want to let the event get shut down by the Left and claims he ended up paying around $10,000.

"Online ticket sales and booth sales amounted to roughly 5k," Cadavid wrote. "There was not profit, just a tremendous out-of-pocket expense thanks to leftist threats and harassment."

The event's Facebook pagelists that 178 people attended, and that tickets were $35. $35 times 178 equals $6,230. You also have to consider theeventbrite pagewhich charged people who wanted to eat at the event $62. $62 times 178 people equals $11,036, which would've given him a profit even after the alleged raised costs. And then there was a GoFundMe page that solicited donations for the event, that he mysteriously deleted. Hmm...

When we asked him to send us proof he paid and earned the amounts he claimed, Cadavid never responded.

Link:
Laguna Vigil For Victims of Illegal Immigrants Never Bothered to Invite Victims, Advocacy Groups - OC Weekly

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested Wednesday that Chicagos status as a so-called sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants contributes to the citys high murder total.

Last year, Chicagos 2.7 million residents experienced more murders than the 12 million people who live in New York and Los Angeles combined, Sessions said in a speech from Miami. Respect for the rule of law has broken down in Chicago. The sanctuary city policies are one sad example of that.

But a fact-check published Thursday by the Better Government Association and PolitiFact says the connection Sessions made between violent crime and city immigration policies is groundless.

Matt Dietrich, who wrote the fact-check, said there is ample evidence that Chicagos high murder total is a result of gang violence and not illegal immigration.

Dietrich spoke with WBEZs Melba Lara on Thursday about his report. Below are highlights from their conversation

Matt Dietrich: There are a lot of elements that go into this fact-check but I think the overarching one is that Jeff Sessions is trying to connect a couple of dots here that simply cannot be connected. Hes taking Chicago and using it as an example because of the number of homicides and the amount of gun violence in Chicago, and hes equating that with illegal immigrants, in other words saying that if Chicago police would get tougher on immigration that the shootings and murders would go down.

Theres ample evidence and I think police superintendent Eddie Johnson has said it repeatedly that this is a product of gang violence in the city, not illegal immigrants.

Dietrich: The research says overwhelmingly that undocumented immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes. We quote in the fact-check from one of the authors of a study on this, and he says illegal immigrants are very motivated not to blow that opportunity by getting in trouble with the police. Theyre here mostly because the want to work and they have added incentive to not break the law.

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Dietrich: What Chicago has is a directive to police officers that they are not to use immigration status as grounds for detaining someone. They are not to question people about their immigration status. The interaction that they can have with federal immigration agents is very limited, by directive. However, that same directive also has a four-point clause that says that the conditions that I just described dont apply if a suspect has an outstanding criminal warrant, if the suspect has been convicted of a felony, if the suspect is a defendant in a case in which a felony charge is pending or if the suspect has been identified as a known gang member or admits that theyre a known gang member.

So as far as having an official policy that protects what Jeff Sessions calls criminal aliens, no, thats not true.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Click the play button to hear the entire segment, which was produced by Patrick Smith. Web story written by Justin Bull.

Continued here:
Report: Link Between Chicago Murders And Illegal Immigration 'Groundless' - WBEZ

The man accused of smuggling 39 illegal immigrants in the back of a tractor-trailer, resulting in the death of 10 immigrants, now faces the death penalty after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Antonio Wednesday afternoon.

James Mathew Bradley Jr., 60 of Clearwater, Fla, was indicted on five charges. The charges include conspiracy to transport and harbor undocumented aliens for financial gain resulting in death, transportation of undocumented aliens resulting in death, conspiracy to transport and harbor undocumented aliens for financial gain resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, transporting undocumented aliens resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Bradley faces the death penalty or up to life in prison if hes convicted on the transportation resulting in death charges. He faces 20 years for the serious bodily injury charge and 10 for the felon in possession of a weapon charge.

Early in the morning of July 23, San Antonio Police Department officers responded to a Walmart off Interstate-35. According to court documents, one of the officers found the trailer with Bradley in the cab, and a number of people in the back of the trailer.

Ten of the illegal immigrants were already dead, two are still in the hospital, and 22 are in federal custody and charged as material witnesses. Five of the immigrants, including four juveniles, have been released and turned over to immigration authorities. The juveniles are being watched over by Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Immigrants who were held in the cab estimated there were as many as 200 people in the trailer during the transport, according to court records. They said they paid differing fees for being smuggled.

Bradley claimed he didnt know the immigrants were in the trailer and only found out when he exited the vehicle to relieve himself, and then tried to help them.

As Fox News reported in July, Bradley told investigators he heard banging and shaking in the trailer and was surprised when he was run over by Spanish people and knocked to the ground, according to a criminal complaint.

Bradley has remained in federal custody since he was arrested at the scene.

Ray Bogan is a Fox News multimedia reporter based in El Paso, Texas. Follow him on twitter: @RayBogan

The rest is here:
Texas illegal-immigrant disaster: Suspected driver of crowded truck indicted, could get death penalty - Fox News