Nicolas Guaman, an Ecuadoran, is yet another illegal alien with a criminal past who was not deported, but instead repeatedly released from jail. Had he been deported under the Secure Communities program, with which leftist Governor Deval Patrick refused to participate, Matthew Denice might still be alive.
That’s the conclusion of Patrick’s critics in the Bay State.
And Guaman isn’t the only drunk-driving illegal alien to be released from custody in Massachusetts of late. President Obama’s uncle, Onyango, was “quietly released” last week, as The New American has reported.
What Happened
According to the Milford Daily News, quoting Denice’s family, the Framingham State University grad was returning home after helping a friend repair a car. “Police said Guaman, driving his 2004 black Ford pickup truck, failed to yield at a stop sign at Congress and Fayette streets, striking Denice on his 2003 Buell motorcycle and dragging his body about a quarter mile.”
Authorities say Denice “was alive when Guaman dragged him with his truck.”
Denice's body was dislodged from under Guaman's truck when he ran off the road at the corner of West and Bancroft streets, police said.
A prosecutor said that when Denice became dislodged from the truck, Guaman backed up over Denice and drove off.
When the cops finally caught up with the blotto Ecuadoran, they found Budweiser beer cans in the truck, the paper reported. Guaman, cops said, “had ‘blooshot and glassy eyes.’”
A boy, later identified as Guaman's 6-year-old son, got out of the truck and started punching and kicking officers. The boy yelled at officers to leave his father alone.
Guaman is charged with a laundry list of crimes, the paper reported, citing court documents: “negligent vehicular homicide while driving under the influence of liquor, leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury and death, possession of an open container of alcohol in a vehicle, failure to stop for police, unlicensed driving, failure to yield at a stop sign, resisting arrest and wanton or reckless conduct creating risk to a child.”
Guaman’s brother owned the 2004 black Ford pick-up Nicolas Guaman was driving.
Protesting Deval Patrick
Denice’s family held a protest outside the Milford Town Hall, where representatives of the Ecuadoran consulate went to meet with city officials. Michael Denice, Matthew’s brother, told the Milford Daily News: “We want to let the consulate representatives know illegal immigrants are not welcome in (Milford) and as a community we're going to stand by that. We want to send a message to the Ecuadorean consulate as well as illegal immigrants.”
The problem in Massachusetts, however, critics say, is the Governor, who opted out of the Secure Communities program in June to appease the “Latino” community.
The Secure Communities program connects state and local police with federal authorities through a fingerprint database that can identify illegal-alien criminals. Patrick doesn’t like that idea.
When he opted out of the program, he echoed the cries of “Latinos” worried that “innocent” illegals, meaning those with no criminal record, as well as those with “lesser offenses,” had been deported.
Said Patrick, “I made a judgment not on politics, not on how it was going to look, but on the basis of what is best for the whole Commonwealth.”
Latino Fox News reported that a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement from “the governor’s public safety secretary, Mary Elizabeth Heffernan, said ICE statistics indicate that only about one in four of those deported since the inception of Boston’s pilot program were convicted of a serious crime and more than half of those deported were identified as non-criminal.”
Problem is, Guaman was a very dangerous criminal before he killed Denice “Guaman had been arrested three times since 2007 for driving without a license in Milford, Uxbridge and Attleboro,” the Milford Daily News reported, quoting Milford Police Chief Thomas O’Loughlin.
The Attleboro charge was dismissed. Guaman also served one year of probation from May 2008 to May 2009 for charges that included assault and battery on a police officer and assault on a firefighter after a 2008 incident in which he interfered with the treatment of a family member who had allegedly attempted to enter someone else’s home, O'Loughlin said.
O'Loughlin said Saturday's incident underscores the importance of the Secure Communities Act, which would allow fingerprints to be sent directly to Homeland Securities officials. In this case, Milford Police had to call federal officials to send them the fingerprints.
The Worcester County Sheriff, Lew Evangelidis, agrees, the paper reported: “As Worcester County Sheriff, I want to be emphatically clear that if the Secure Communities Act was already in place, a criminal alien such as Nicholas Guaman with a prior arrest record could have been identified by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE giving them the opportunity to deport Mr. Guaman in advance of this horrific crime on Aug. 20.”
An editorial in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette denouncing Patrick detailed the Ecuadoran drunk driver’s record further. His past “includes a conviction on breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, three assault and battery charges, and other miscellaneous offenses.”
Yet Patrick, radio talker Michael Graham wrote in the Boston Herald, is as intransigent now as he was when he went to Milford to meet with locals, who said they wanted something done on immigration. Patrick merely said criminals such as Guaman must be deported.
Reported Graham, “As Matt’s stepfather said on my radio show … ‘If Guaman was deported some time ago, this would never have happened.’”
“Some time ago.” Perhaps last month. That’s when Patrick was in Milford for a town-hall-style forum. Angry locals confronted him with signs, like “When will you secure OUR community?” They begged him then to end this ridiculous policy, told him of residents killed by illegal immigrants in the recent past.
What did Patrick tell them?
“We don’t need Secure Communities.” All it does is “give the impression that we are doing something.”
I wonder if Patrick would be willing to go back today and tell Matt’s parents that, even after the loss of their son, we still don’t need it.
Apparently, he would. Of Denice’s death, Patrick said, “Illegal immigration didn’t kill this person, a drunk driver killed this person.”
Apropos of Patrick’s protests about Secure Communities, in August, ICE Director John Morton ended agreements with nearly 40 states that participate in the program because his agency, he said, does not need state cooperation to pursue the program’s objectives.
Drunk Driving Illegals An Old Story
The vehicular homicide of Matthew Denice is nothing new. As The New American reported in June, twice-deported, drunk-driving illegal alien mowed down a police officer in Houston. Beyond that, The New American reported extensively on the problem 2007.
It isn’t improving. In late August, President Obama’s illegal-alien uncle, Onyango Obama, was arrested for drunk driving after he nearly hit a police cruiser. He pleaded not guilty to drunk driving, failing to yield and negligent driving.
The authorities released him.
