Harrison Township Michigan

Feds crack down on illegal immigrants in Michigan

When Troy police spotted Miguel Rojas-Villanueva last October, the 26-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico was passed out behind the wheel of his pickup.

It was 1 a.m., and Rojas-Villanueva was stopped in the center lane of northbound I-75, near Rochester Road, with a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the limit at which someone can be convicted of drunken driving.

Six months earlier, authorities had sent him back to Mexico for driving drunk in Troy on a suspended license and cocaine possession.

This time, they took a different tack with the man who has illegally entered the U.S. five times: They prosecuted him in federal criminal court.

He got 12 months in prison, plus deportation and a felony conviction that dashes any hope of legally rejoining his wife, a U.S. citizen, in Rochester Hills.

He's one of nearly 150 illegal immigrants prosecuted in a federal crackdown in eastern Michigan since January 2010.

The initiative has sparked criticism from those who say it's a waste of money.

But David Koelsch, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, said immigration laws must be enforced, even though he says they are sometimes unfair and need to be changed.

"You can argue that it's a questionable use of prosecutorial resources, but re-entering the country illegally is a felony, and it's time we started to take deportation seriously," he said.

Authorities have plenty of ways of nabbing illegal immigrants.

Many are arrested during routine traffic stops. Some are tripped up when they try to cross the border.

Cesar Tomas Hernandez, 43, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was turned in by an informant.

Immigration agents confronted him in March while he sat in his 2007 Jeep Liberty outside a Romulus restaurant.

They said Hernandez readily admitted to being in the U.S. illegally after serving prison sentences in New York for drugs and weapons violations, and had a phony New York driver's license, a handgun and a stash of fake cocaine.

Hernandez, who has been deported three times, is jailed on federal charges of illegally re-entering the U.S. and of being a noncitizen in possession of a firearm. The charges carry a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

He's one of nearly 150 immigrants to be prosecuted in eastern Michigan since early 2010 in a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants who repeatedly re-enter the country.

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