Ritter defends illegal immigration record

Democrat lays blame on Washington after attacks by Beauprez

Stuart Steers, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 23, 2006 at midnight

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Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter on Tuesday strongly defended his record as district attorney of prosecuting illegal immigrants, challenging criticism from U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, his GOP opponent, that he has failed to aggressively pursue immigrants who broke the law.

Ritter said he made it a policy to always send illegal immigrants to jail so federal authorities would have the chance to detain them.

"I always instructed my lawyers to ask for jail time (for illegals) to ensure (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents) would have the ability to come pick them up," said Ritter, who served as Denver district attorney until 2005.

For weeks, Beauprez has been accusing Ritter of refusing to crack down on illegal immigrants arrested in Denver. A spokesman for Beauprez charged that Ritter routinely offered illegals plea bargains.

"Bill Ritter has looked to plea bargains and found the easy way out his entire career," John Marshall said. "He hasn't answered the question of how many illegal aliens he plea bargained with. We are going to keep calling him on it."

Ritter said his office didn't track the number of illegal immigrants they dealt with, but Denver enacted strict policies to deal with them. Not only did he ask for mandatory jail time for all illegal immigrants, he said, but he also didn't allow them into drug court and other treatment programs.

"We didn't feel it was appropriate to spend tax dollars on drug treatment for people in the country illegally," Ritter said.

Most of the illegal immigrants arrested in Denver were held on charges of possessing less than an ounce of drugs, Ritter said. While federal authorities were notified of the arrest, he said the feds often chose not to detain them.

"We did everything we could to get them deported," he said.

Ritter also lashed out at Beauprez, saying the real problem with illegal immigration was in Washington, and Beauprez should have dealt with it there.

"We enforced the law, protected the public and served taxpayers well," Ritter said. "That's more than I can say about Congressman Beauprez and the utter failure of Washington, D.C., to enact substantive immigration reform."

Marshall insisted Beauprez had been fighting to crack down on illegal immigration.

"He voted to ban sanctuary cities and to secure our borders," he said. "He voted to increase funding for border security. That's why he's so frustrated with Washington. He wants to come home and get things done."

Other metro-area district attorneys say their counties have policies similar to Denver's for dealing with illegal immigrants.

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