Probation for illegals?

Houston Chronicle:

Bayron Orlando Euceda, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, did not serve a day in prison for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old Houston girl.

Instead, a Harris County judge sentenced the 21-year-old to eight years deferred adjudication, a form of probation. A sticky note on his plea agreement reads, "Best interest of victim."

"That's incredible," said Andy Kahan, director of the Houston Mayor's Crime Victims Office and a former probation officer, after thumbing through Euceda's court paperwork. ''The best interest of the victim would have been to have that guy locked up."

A Houston Chronicle investigation found 330 cases involving defendants sentenced to some form of probation in Harris County — despite admitting to the jailer upon their arrest that they were in the country illegally. At least 44 of those cases involved defendants who later had their probation revoked and were sent to prison or who now have outstanding arrest warrants, the investigation found.

Slightly more than half of the 330 cases involved felony charges. In a handful of cases, illegal immigrants under the county's supervision later were accused of committing serious crimes, including aggravated assault and sexual abuse of a child.

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Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the ICE criminal investigation office in Houston, said ICE officials "triage and tend to go after the worst of the worst" of immigrants who are sentenced to probation and released from jail but who are eligible for deportation. ICE has improved screening in Harris County's jails in recent months and has stepped up efforts to catch immigrants who have not complied with an order from an immigration judge to leave the country.

For example, in the 2008 fiscal year, Houston's fugitive teams made 1,587 arrests, up 28 percent from 2007, ICE officials said. Nationally, ICE fugitive teams made nearly 34,000 arrests — more than double the number two years ago.

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The practice of sentencing illegal immigrants to probation attracted sharp criticism after an illegal immigrant from Mexico killed Houston police officer Rodney Johnson.

Juan Quintero, who is serving a life sentence for the murder, had several DWI convictions and was sentenced to deferred adjudication for indecency with a 12-year-old girl in 1999. Quintero was deported but returned to Houston illegally and shot Johnson on Sept. 21, 2006.

Johnson's widow, Houston police Sgt. Joslyn Johnson, said she hopes for a policy change that would stop illegal immigrants from ending up on probation, saying prison time would be more of a deterrent to coming back to the U.S. illegally.

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While some judges said they were simply unaware of a defendant's immigration status, others said the status should not matter.

George Godwin, a Harris County district judge, sentenced 19-year-old Hugo Sanchez to eight years' deferred adjudication in February for having sex with an 11-year-old girl. Immigration officials filed paperwork to detain Sanchez within two days of his arrest in September 2007.

Godwin could not comment specifically on the Sanchez case, but he said he generally tries to keep immigration issues separate from the criminal cases.

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There is much more. Judges like Godwin have put their blinders on because they don't want to see what is happening. The court should see illegal immigration status as an opportunity to remove a bad person from the community. Treating them like someone who is a legal citizen makes no sense. Justice demands that they be removed as quickly as possible, and if they return they should be prosecuted by ICE for illegal reentry which is no longer a civil matter.