Cop-Killing Illegal Immigrant Says Sanctuary Cities Helped Him Avoid Capture

By Nancy Flory Published on February 9, 2016

Sanctuary cities provide a safe haven for criminal immigrants crossing the border illegally, according to a man convicted of capital murder in the death of Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson in 2006. Juan Leonardo Quintero, a Mexico native, was deported to Mexico in 1998 after he pleaded guilty to a charge of sexual indecency with a 12-year-old girl, according to The Texas Tribune. He returned to the country and when Johnson pulled him over for a traffic stop in 2006, Quintero shot him multiple times in the shoulder and head.

After the murder, law enforcement agencies had a hard time identifying Quintero, says The Texas Tribune. Weaknesses in systematic practices like purging the names of sex offenders from Texas Department of Public Safety databases allowed criminals like Quintero to cross the border and remain here illegally, sometimes for years.

From his jail cell in Allred Unit, a maximum-security prison near Wichita Falls, Texas, where he will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, Quintero says that practice, along with Houston’s Safe Haven policies of forbidding police to ask immigrants about their citizenship status, allowed him to live and work in the area for over 12 years without worrying about getting caught. “When we don’t have no papers we can give you a different name,” says Quintero. “All they can do is get the fingerprints.”

Even though he was told he’d face 10-20 years in a federal prison if he returned to the States after his 1998 charge, within seven months Quintero was back, reports The Texas Tribune. Quintero says he didn’t worry about being sent back to Mexico before his arrest in Johnson’s death. “I wasn’t worried about being deported,” he says, “I was worried about being put in prison.”

The murder of Officer Johnson prompted Texas to initiate reforms. The Texas Department of Public Safety no longer purges their databases of sex offenders’ names. In addition, the city of Houston now allows more cooperation between police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to ensure that criminal illegal immigrants are released to ICE to detain, if warranted.

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