Friday's rampage in California in which Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamonte, an illegal Mexican immigrant, killed two sheriff's officers, could make it more difficult for the Obama administration to move ahead with plans to expand protections from deportation for illegal immigrants,
The New York Times reported.
Monroy Bracamonte had twice been deported — in 1997 and again in 2001 because of his involvement with narcotics. Yet he managed to return to live in the U.S. for more than 10 years. While he chalked up 10 misdemeanor driving violations between 2003 and 2009 they were insufficiently serious to create a fingerprint record, the Times reported.
Virginia Kice of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the case "underscores why technology like Secure Communities is so important. It relies on fingerprints, and it gives us a virtual presence in jails and prisons across the country," the Times reported.
About 1.1 million illegal immigrants were deported from 2003 to 2013. Roughly 33 percent of them were individuals who had previously been deported. Sixty percent of 2013 "removals" were also for immigrants deported previously, according to the Times.
Monroy Bracamonte had a Facebook presence under different aliases. "This is a very muddy investigation with multiple identities," Sgt. Lisa Bowman of the Sacramento County Sheriff's office told the Times.
California recently passed a measure which would forbid anyone charged with a traffic violation that does not lead to an arrest from having their fingerprints matched against the federal database.
"This is a tragic case that is already being used by advocates to argue against any kind of changes," said law dean Kevin Johnson of the University of California, Davis. "But everyone agrees that this is the sort of person we should be focused on not having here," the Times reported.
"This case shows that our laws are not being enforced, and there are tragic consequences to not enforcing them," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports tougher immigration rules, according to the Times.
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