Houston cop killer may be illegal alien

Houston Chronicle:

The gunman who shot and killed a Houston police officer and then was fatally shot during an undercover sting late Tuesday is believed to have been an illegal immigrant from Mexico, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Robert Rutt, agent in charge of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement office of criminal investigations in Houston, confirmed that Houston police had asked for assistance in determining the immigration status of the gunman shot to death in a drug store parking lot after officer Henry Canales, 42, was fatally wounded.

“Based purely on name and date of birth checks we ran, we find no records of him in our databases, and him being born in Mexico it appears he was here illegally,” Rutt said. “However, until we run his fingerprints through our system we cannot make a final determination.”

Rutt said a fingerprint check on three companions of the gunman — arrested shortly after Canales was slain — showed they are in the country illegally.

The Harris County District Attorney’s office identified the dead gunman as Roberto Pedroza-Carrillo, 37.

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Canales was mortally wounded, and Pedroza-Carrillo was shot and killed by a second undercover officer, identified as Ruben Lopez, who had been watching from nearby, Houston Police Department spokesman Victor Senties said. Pedroza-Carrillo fired at Lopez, but missed. (See the sequence of events in the shootings here.)

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Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, said it was too early to link Canales’ death to the HPD’s long-standing policy of not inquiring about residents’ immigration status.

Since the murder of Houston police officer Rodney Johnson in 2006 by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record, the union has pushed for more authority to question residents about their citizenship during criminal investigations. In March, veteran HPD officer Rick Salter was shot in the face while serving a search warrant on a previously deported criminal immigrant, injuries that have left him blind in one eye and paralyzed on one side.

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A policy that does not inquire as to immigration status is one that allows illegals to go undected and unremoved. It also leads to preventable crimes like this one. You would think Houston would be more protective of its police.