Deportable Alien with Priors Kills Cyclist during Tragic DUI in Kentucky
At the end of May, Odilon Paz-Salvador, a Mexican national who had been put into deportation proceedings tragically killed a well-known and respected Lexington attorney, Mark Hinkel, after driving drunk and running into the cyclist during a racing event in Kentucky.Paz-Salvador was still in the United States despite three prior arrests and two convictions for DUI. In 2010, Paz-Salvador first pled guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge of alcohol intoxication. In 2011, he pled guilty to a second “aggravated” DUI and driving without a license. Unfortunately, ICE did not assume custody of Paz-Salvador to initiate deportation proceedings until June 2013, when he was arrested for a third time on a DUI charge. ICE released him on bond eight days later.Tragically, under the Obama Administration’s enforcement “priority” policies, which have been in effect since March 2011, Paz-Salvador was considered a “Third Priority” (the lowest priority) for immigration enforcement.When ICE released Paz-Salvador on bond, the agency surely knew that the backlog in our immigration courts has skyrocketed since 2008. (For a chart showing the increasing immigration court backlogs nationwide, click here). Indeed, after his release in 2013 Paz-Salvador remained free for two years until he killed Mr. Hinkel. He had not yet had a deportation hearing.President Obama frequently invokes family unity for illegal aliens as an excuse for not enforcing immigration laws. Yet he will not even acknowledge the tragic consequences of his policies on countless American families, like Mr. Hinkel’s, that are irrevocably torn apart by his refusal to deport illegal aliens who have demonstrated a callous disregard for public safety.It should not take the killing of an innocent person to raise the enforcement “priority” of a convicted illegal alien from a third tier to a first tier. ICE has now issued another detainer with the local authorities who are holding him on murder charges, keeping him incarcerated under a $100,000.00 bond.To see other examples of crimes that illegal aliens have committed, click here.