Guatemalan national Rufino Estuardo faces a vehicular homicide charge and numerous others after police allege he was drunk when he hit and killed a motorcyclist with his vehicle, then fled the scene.
Hopewell township Police contend the 24-year-old was intoxicated and driving without a license when he blew through a red light traveling south on Scotch Road around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and collided with Orest L. Huraleczko, who was riding a motorcycle west on Pennington Road, NJ.com reports.
Huraleczko, 60, died at the scene as Estuardo drove away, according to Central Jersey.
“Police said he did not stop at the scene and was located by responding officers about a mile away in a commercial building parking lot with his vehicle,” according to the news site.
“Police said Mr. Estuardo was a Guatemalan national. He was charged with death by auto, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, driving while intoxicated, failing to observe a red light, reckless driving and being an unlicensed driver.”
The Trentonian reports Estuardo was arrested and processed at Hopewell Township police headquarters then lodged in the Mercer County Correction Center on a $200,000 full cash bail. Police officials said they contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, presumably because Estuardo is in the country illegally.
Estuardo was not injured in the collision, according to news reports.
The incident comes as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns on a promise to tighten immigration, and cities across the country evaluate their relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In San Francisco, the city’s board of supervisors approved an agreement last week that bars local law enforcement from notifying ICE officials when they release illegal immigrants from custody, except in special circumstances, according to The Daily Signal.
The news site points out the move is made possible by an executive order on immigration issued by President Obama in November 2014 that canceled a program started by President George W. Bush in 2008 that required local law enforcement hold illegal immigrants they arrest for deportation.
ICE data shows deportations of criminally convicted illegal immigrants increased steadily from 114,415 in 2008 to 225,390 in 2012, but have decreased since to a low of 139,368 last year.
ICE officials deported nearly 40,000 illegal immigrant criminals last year than in 2014, according to the ICE data cited by The Daily Signal.
Obama’s new program, the Priority Enforcement Program, only requires local authorities to notify federal officials of arrested illegal immigrants if federal officials specifically request the information. The program does, however, allow ICE to issue a detainer for those officials believe they have probable cause to deport.
“Because of a 2014 federal appeals court ruling, which said that complying with detainer requests is optional, local jurisdictions are legally free to enact their own immigration policies,” according to the news site.
Center for Immigration Studies’ Jessica Vaughn pointed to the ICE statistics as evidence of how the Obama administration’s policies enable more illegal immigrant criminals to remain in the U.S.
“I don’t see evidence that PEP is doing a better job of removing criminal aliens,” she told The Daily Signal. “The sanctuary cities problem is not what is responsible for the decline in deportations. It’s because the Obama administration’s polices and that they’ve put so many criminal aliens off limits for immigration officers.”
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