DUI - illegal alien arrested, convicted 9 times since 2003

Authorities can't explain why alien who killed father of 5 still in U.S.

When Isidro Pena Soto's SUV slammed into an oncoming pickup truck, after passing another car at 90 miles-per-hour, the illegal alien who had been arrested or convicted at least nine times since 2003 made Kent Boone the fifth fatality in two weeks along a dangerous stretch of Northern California highway.

The notorious two-lane roadway, known as "blood alley," runs through Napa, Solano, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties. It averaged more than 10 deaths a year during the five-year period ending in 2005.

Pena, 26, was driving without a license while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. California Highway Patrol officers found two pounds of methamphetamine in his vehicle and more at his home. It was not his first brush with U.S. law, and that's what Boone's survivors find so hard to understand.

"He needs to be in prison, there's no way they're going to be able to deport him and keep him out of our country," Boone's widow, Regina Sorisio, told the Oroville Mercury Register.

Boone, a 33-year-old pipe fitter and father of five, was killed on March 31 as he drove to work.

Pena was hospitalized following the accident but arrested when he was released from doctors' care. This week he pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

"It's been quite challenging getting any information on anything," April Godin, Boone's former wife and mother of two of his children, told the Contra Costa Times. "It's just all of the loopholes and lack of information."

The information that is coming out now makes Boone's family and law enforcement officials wonder why Pena had not been deported before.

Pena has been convicted six times of driving without a license. In 2003 and 2005, he was convicted for DUI in Contra Costa County – and for a felony narcotics charge in the same county in 2005. That same year, he was convicted of a DUI in neighboring Solano County – the county where he killed Boone last month.

According to the Contra Costa Times, court records do not show the circumstances of his release from custody on those charges.

A spokeswoman with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency said no one from any of the law enforcement agencies or courts that had handled Pena's offenses in the past had ever contacted her agency.

"Cases like this certainly underscore why we want to encourage local law enforcement agencies to tell us when they encounter foreign nationals with multiple prior convictions for crimes that certainly present a potential threat to public safety," said ICE's Virginia Kice.

"The only time [immigration status] is a relevant issue is if someone is charged with a crime and we incarcerate them," said Concord police Lt. David Chilimidos.

"We actually treat everybody like they were here legally," said Richmond police Capt. Alec Griffin. "We don't make contacts with ICE just in the course of normal business."

In Richmond, with its large immigrant population, local police do not participate with ICE in roundups of suspected illegals. The city terminated daylight traffic checkpoints aimed at stopping street crimes, Griffin said, because immigrants feared they were being targeted.

For whatever reason, Pena's multiple trips through the justice system never resulted in him being identified as an illegal alien who might "present a potential threat to public safety."

"It doesn't seem like it would be hard to put a red flag on there," Godin said. "There's so many questions I have. ... Why isn't anyone giving us information?"

There is now an immigration hold on Pena, who is being held without bail and will be turned over to immigration authorities for deportation if and when he is released from custody.

Source - http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=41232