Illegal Alien Drunk Driving
This week saw the tragic death of 46-year-old Melissa Powell and her 16 year-old son Riordan at the hands of an alleged drunk driver in Broomfield, Colorado. The intoxicated driver, referred to as a “Boulder man” is in actual fact a four-time deported illegal alien from El Salvador. Jose Menjiaur-Alas has not only been removed several times (only to return) but has racked up four drunk driving convictions during his various illegal stays in America. In fact, Menjiaur-Alas had pleaded guilty to one of those drunk driving charges just days before he killed his two victims. At the time of the offense, he was disqualified from driving. Unfortunately, the tragedy in Colorado is far from isolated.
Drunk driving is a major problem, aggravated greatly by illegal immigration. Statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that between Fiscal Years 2018 and 2023, over 43,000 drunk driving offenses were logged. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, ICE reported that 175 illegal aliens were arrested for repeated DUI offenses. The statistics show that Jose Menjiaur-Alas is not alone in his tendency to break both U.S. immigration law and U.S. laws on drunk driving, and to do so repeatedly. The risk to Americans of all backgrounds is heightened by the lax attitude toward illegal immigration in some jurisdictions, especially so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, with ordinary Americans paying the price. One example is from Chicago.
In 2011, Mexican illegal alien Saul Chavez killed a 66- year-old Chicagoan in a drunk driving incident. Chavez had already been convicted of another DUI offense before this. Rather than detain him for ICE, the city authorities, as part of their sanctuary policy, simply released him once a bond was paid. This allowed Chavez to flee to Mexico, and he was only finally extradited to face justice in America in 2022, over a decade later. The victim’s brother Brian McCann said that “my anger is more directed at the fumbling and bumbling of Cook County [Chicago] agencies…I’m more angry at the system than the offender.”
In another incident, this time in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts, Nicolas Dutan Guaman, an illegal alien from Ecuador, ran a stop sign while drunk and struck motorcyclist Matthew Denice, causing him to become lodged under the car. Despite Denice repeatedly banging on the car as he was dragged for a quarter of a mile, begging the driver to stop, Guaman did not. Guaman was finally deported in 2023. In July 2020, two U.S. Army veterans and a retired police officer were killed, and four other people injured when a Mexican illegal alien, Ivan Robles Navejas, struck them while drunk driving in Kerr County, Texas.
In addition to those who die from drunk driving, there are also those whose lives are permanently changed due to injury. In August 2023, drunk driving Nicaraguan illegal alien Yacarely Diaz-Castro struck a police officer, who had been standing on the road assisting another vehicle. This left the officer with permanent and life changing skull and spinal injuries. Diaz-Castro had entered the country illegally on the ‘parole’ program seven months prior. In May 2017, 6 year-old Lennox Lake from California was returning from a trip to Disneyland when he was struck by an illegal alien drunk driver. The driver, illegal Mexican alien Constantino Banda Acosta, had previously been deported an astonishing 17 times. He was later sentenced to 70 months in jail for drug trafficking. Meanwhile, 6 year-old Lennox has been left with permanent physical and psychological injuries.
Drunk driving impacts us all. When an illegal alien drives drunk, everyone, regardless of their race or immigration status is at risk. The Powell family in Broomfield, Colorado, had only just celebrated Christmas. There will be two empty places at their table next Christmas thanks to illegal alien drunk driving. Sadly, many American families of all backgrounds are facing the same prospect. One of the many reasons to properly control immigration is to spare more Americans the same fate.