The excellent illegal alien crime series now running in the Houston Chronicle has sobering details of a justice system chained by political correctness.

Today’s article is an examination of the failure of the bail system in the city [An abuse of freedom: Many illegal immigrants out on bail commit another crime or vanish before trial, by Susan Carroll, Houston Chronicle, Nov 17, 2008].

The release of illegal alien criminals on bail is absolutely an invitation to abscond, but judges don’t always know the status of accused persons. Sometimes authorities do know the status and let the bad guys go anyway, particularly in sanctuary cities like Houston and San Francisco (see A system’s fatal flaws) — and there is no excuse for that.

The Chronicle examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who told jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available.

The city’s criminal alien records only go back to June 2007? That in itself is a jaw-dropper. I suspect that the public furor following the murder of Houston PD Officer Rodney Johnson by a previously convicted illegal alien may have had a part in finally bringing the sanctuary city of Houston a small step closer to sanity by keeping records of their permissiveness.

The cases make you wonder what is going on in Houston when dangerous illegal alien criminals, including child rapists, are freed to walk the streets.

• Jose Blanco, a 64-year-old accused of repeatedly sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl in southwest Houston, told jailers when he was arrested in June 2007 that he was in the country illegally. He was charged with indecency with a child and posted $10,000 bail. That charge was dismissed and replaced with more serious allegations: two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Blanco absconded after missing a court date in October 2007 and remains a fugitive.

• Juan Fernando Villalon, 43, told Harris County jailers twice in 2007 he was an illegal immigrant from Mexico — both times after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. He posted $10,000 bail in December 2007 and was released from Harris County Jail. In January, while out on bail, he tracked her down and punched her, leading to another felony assault charge. He was arrested in June and is serving a two-year prison sentence.

• Arturo Munoz Osorio, 62, was charged in August 2007 with aggravated sexual assault of a child. He told jailers he was in the country illegally when he was booked into jail Aug. 2, 2007. He posted $10,000 bail four days later and missed a September court date. A warrant for his arrest was issued in January.

How dreary that law enforcement will not even protect us from the worst of the worst.

A typical headline in the  Vijay Taneja case is Virginia man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud, Forbes, November 14, 2008.That is, except in Virginia, where it was Man Pleads to Mortgage Fraud.

As usual, the Times Of India manages to get the main point in the headline, as the American press refuses to do:Indian-American pleads guilty to $33m fraud, November 15, 2008.

The whole point about Mr. Taneja’s life for many years has been that he’s an Indo-American businessman, and before he got caught in mortgage fraud, the Washington Post used to run stories about him importing Indian talent to entertain the Indo-American community in the Washington area:

“Backstage, promoter Vijay Taneja paced between the stars’ makeshift dressing rooms and a VIP room where an Indian dinner buffet was being served. Nearby, a group of men staged an even more exclusive party, its entertainment the more mainstream likes of Jack Daniels and Johnnie Walker.

Outside, stretch limousines waited. Their names might twist the average American tongue, but these stars travel in style — along with their managers, makeup artists, security guards, back-up dancers, families and anyone else they can’t live without for two weeks or so.

By now, promoters know immigration policies. They must apply for performer visas months before scheduling a tour and make sure the dancers really dance, the singers really sing and all really intend to return home. In 2003, Daler Mehndi, one of India’s most popular performers of an upbeat Punjabi folk music known as bhangra, and his brother were accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars to facilitate passages out of India by allowing people to pose as part of their troupe. The charges were later dropped.

Besides tougher questions and more-thorough background checks at U.S. embassies, Taneja said he has not observed a reduction in visas granted. If anything, he finds himself sponsoring more, the talent tumbling out of his rented limos.

….

For years, Taneja had a lock on the South Asian entertainment scene in Washington, running the concert business in addition to his mortgage lending company. He partners with promoters in other cities who often have better luck marketing concerts through ethnic media, music shops and grocery stores on their own turf. And sometimes, he serves as the local promoter himself.”

Concert Promoters Gamble on Bringing Global Stars to U.S. By S. Mitra Kalita, Washington Post, June 13, 2005

Mr Taneja was also featured very regularly in the Home Sales column of the Washington Post:

• December 28, 2005–CHRONICAL DR., 12515-Cynthia L. and William E. Glover to Vijay Taneja, $1.05 million.
• March 5, 2006–CENTERBORO DR., 2791, No. 472-Anita Rashid to Vijay Taneja, $581,000.
• September 28, 2006–LAFAYETTE FOREST DR., 7715, No. 102-Vijay Taneja to Luis M. Teodoro, $360,000.
• November 14, 2007–EDINBURGH DR.,7918-Vijay Taneja to Hua Xu, $550,000
• November 28, 2007–EDINBURGH DR.,7918-Vijay Taneja to Hua Xu, $550,000.
• December 26, 2007–EDINBURGH DR.,7918-Financial Mortgage Inc. to Vijay Taneja, $590,000.

I’m not quite sure why the Edinburgh Drive property is mentioned twice in November, 2007, but the flip in December would be suspicious even if you didn’t know that Financial Mortgage Inc was Taneja’s own company. The main Washington Post story explains what he did with his money:

Prosecutors told the judge that Taneja invested millions of his mortgage proceeds in Indian films and theatrical productions through one of his companies, Elite Entertainment, and that they are still trying to untangle the financial web. “He has millions of dollars unaccounted for,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Learned said as he asked Hilton to order Taneja to be electronically monitored to ensure that he doesn’t flee before sentencing. “There’s so much money, and it’s difficult to figure out where it all went.”

Trout emphasized that Taneja, a U.S. citizen, has cooperated extensively with the government, and Hilton ordered him released on a personal recognizance bond.

Members of the Washington region’s tightly knit Indian community said Taneja was revered by many because of his show business connections and insistence on doing business mainly with others in the community.

[Va. Bollywood Investor Admits $33 Million Fraud, By Jerry Markon, Washington Post, November 14, 2008]

The details of his fraud aren’t important, but they’re very interesting:

Court documents say Taneja’s main company, Financial Mortgage Inc., also did refinancings and defrauded banks by not paying off the first mortgages. For example, a customer would borrow $500,000, intending to receive $100,000 as cash and use $400,000 to pay off his first mortgage. Taneja would give the customer the $100,000 and pocket the $400,000. The bank that held the first mortgage wouldn’t notice because it didn’t know there had been a refinancing.

What’s  more important is the differences in the press response to an “immigrant entrepreneur” when he gets indicted. If he’s succeeding, it’s Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy , but when they get arrested it’s Virginia man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud.

Recently a police officer in Durham, NC was investigated for posting anti-Obama comments on Myspace, even thought the comments were said to not involve a racial slur. [Durham police probe allegations officers made anti-Obama remarks online, November 13, 2008 ] Durham has an African-American mayor, and a Hispanic police chief.

Now a university student in Texas has been kicked off his college football team for posting an anti-Obama comment that apparently did involve a racial slur, although nobody is saying which one, and it’s still only a 12 word comment on Facebook. From the Chronicle Of Higher Education:

November 11, 2008

U. of Texas Kicks Football Player Off Team for Anti-Obama Comment on Facebook

A sophomore on the University of Texas football team was dismissed from the squad last week after posting a racially charged comment about President-elect Barack Obama on his Facebook page, The Houston Chronicle reports.

Buck Burnette, a center for the Longhorns, posted the comment on Election Night and was released from the team on November 5. Mr. Burnette said the comment was sent to him from a friend via text message and that he made a poor decision in posting the remark to his Web page.

It appeared under the “update status” on his Facebook page and read, “All the hunters gather up, we have a [racial slur] in the White House,” referring to Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president. Mr. Burnette has since apologized and, in a written statement, called his action a “terrible decision.”

Longhorn coach Mack Brown said he had warned his players about the dangers of posting personal information on the Internet and called Facebook and other social networking websites “really dangerous.”

During a Big 12 coaches’ conference call Monday, a survey found many other coaches share Mr. Brown’s concerns. Some universities go as far as to monitor their athletes’ pages, the newspaper reported. At the University of Oklahoma, for instance, the college’s compliance office routinely checks their athlete’s personal profiles.—David DeBolt

The interesting thing is that the commenters at the Chronicle Of Higher Education, which is probably Stuff White People Like #1187, seem delighted with this. One commenter says “I guess you lose your right to make vile public statements if you represent your school on a sports team. Good — that’s the way it should be. After graduation, a player has the rest of his life to be a jerk, but let’s hope young Mr. Buck Burnette has learned an important lesson (about racism, not just about getting caught) and that his apology is sincere.”

Well, I think he’s at least learned something about “hate.”

And the next commenter says “Mack Brown did the only thing he could. Still, it is disturbing that a prestigious university would admit a student like that, obviously because he can play football.”

This is someone who has no idea of how the minority sports stars that colleges admit behave. Hint: it frequently goes beyond mere speech. But it goes to show, once again, that the Sixties generation that made the long march through the institutions became totalitarians when they arrived.

Tina Davila was the mother of five who was murdered last April in Houston during an attempted car hijacking. She was stabbed as she resisted in order to protect her baby in a car seat. The killer was a previously arrested illegal alien, Timoteo Rios, who readily admitted his status when he was first booked in 2007 for marijuana possession.

On a cloudy Monday afternoon in April, Tina Davila was buried according to her wishes: dressed in her favorite Dallas Cowboys jersey, with a photo of all five of her children tucked inside her coffin. In the picture, Kaylynn, the baby girl Davila died trying to protect, looks fussy, her chubby cheeks puckered into a pout.

Billy Brewer, Kaylynn’s father, watched as Davila’s coffin was lowered into a grave at San Jacinto Memorial Park Cemetery in Houston. Brewer, a long-haul trucker, had a crush on Davila since he was a teenager. He loved her wide smile and how, he said, ‘’she wouldn’t back down from nothing for nobody.” Most especially on the day Davila, 39, tried to fight off the man who cornered her in a parking lot while Kaylynn was strapped into her car seat. Witnesses told police Davila refused to hand over her car keys and screamed as she was stabbed in the chest: “My baby! My baby!”

In the days after her death April 16, Brewer couldn’t bring himself to watch the surveillance camera video of the slaying. Not yet. He had a 4-month-old baby, just learning how to roll from her back to her belly, and a house full of memories.

On the TV news, Brewer learned that Timoteo Rios, the man charged with killing Davila, was an illegal immigrant with a criminal record. Rios had admitted to local law enforcement twice before the slaying that he was in the country illegally, but he wasn’t deported, according to arrest and immigration records. ["Why'd they let him go?" | In killing blamed on immigrant, woman's kin want answers, By Susan Carroll,Houston Chronicle, November 16, 2008]

Another article in the Houston Chronicle’s series on illegal alien crime discloses some disturbing statistics about law enforcement in the sanctuary city and beyond: A system’s fatal flaws.

A review of thousands of criminal and immigration records shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn’t file the paperwork to detain roughly 75 percent of the more than 3,500 inmates who told jailers during the booking process that they were in the U.S. illegally.
Although most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds of convicted felons — including child molesters, rapists and drug dealers — also managed to avoid deportation after serving time in Harris County’s jails [...]
• In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
• About 11 percent of the 3,500 inmates in the review had three or more prior convictions in Harris County. Many had repeatedly cycled through the system despite a history of violence and, in some cases, outstanding deportation orders. [...]
ICE officials estimated that between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year.
Though ICE has improved screening in federal and state prisons in recent years, the agency estimates it screens inmates in only about 10 percent of the nation’s jails.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation’s prisons and jails, estimating it would cost between $930 million and $1 billion and take about 3 1/2 years.

Click here to see the local rogues gallery of illegal alien criminals.