Mother of Young Boy Injured by Criminal Alien In DUI Hit-and-Run Gives Emotional Testimony

Constantino Banda-Acosta, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, has been deported from the United States 15 times in 15 years. His rap sheet includes multiple arrests for domestic violence. Yet, thanks to years of dismally sub-par border protection, he continued returning to the States with ease, and continues committing crimes.

As is the case with hundreds of thousands of criminal aliens, Banda-Acosta’s success in returning the United States, coupled with lack of escalating punishment for over a dozen deportations, allegedly emboldened him to commit crimes that are even more reckless. This time, allegedly engaging in a drunken hit-and-run on May 6 that severely injured Lennox Lake, a six-year-old San Diego boy who remained hospitalized for weeks, and may have permanent brain damage.

At Banda-Acosta’s trial this week, the victim’s mother, Ingrid Lake, shared some of the tragic fallout of the crash. “He’ll sleep in our room every night because he’s scared,” she testified. “He’s scared to go on car rides… He keeps just blanking out and he just stops talking and stares at you in the middle of the sentence, and he won’t remember anything.”

Banda-Acosta is charged with hit-and-run causing serious injury, DUI causing injury, driving with a blood-alcohol content over .08 percent, vandalism, battery and driving without a license.

Responses from San Diego residents varied widely. “Why do we continue to accept these travesties day after day?” asked one resident. “Our legislators encourage it with [anti-enforcement] legislation.” But Andrea Guerrero, executive director of the anti-immigration enforcement group Alliance San Diego, attempted to play down the preventable nature of the crime. “Drunk driving is a nation-wide problem that has affected the lives of far too many,” She said. “Using the pain and suffering of victims and their families to vilify a single community is irresponsible and unhelpful.”

However, the family doesn’t seem to agree that his immigration status is unimportant. The victim’s grandmother expressed shocked when a San Diego Union Tribune reporter told her how many times Banda-Acosta had been deported. “There are not enough words to describe the huge impact his actions have had,” she said.

Anti-Immigration enforcement proponents try their hardest to censor or downplay tragedies committed by criminal illegal aliens. They’ve gone so far as to mock President Trump’s new “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement” initiative – which helps families like the Lakes – by overwhelming the office with prank calls (much to the mainstream media’s delight). Or, as in the case of Andrea Guerrero, they dismiss immigration status as completely irrelevant to the situation, and loudly condemn anyone who disagrees.

However, the families of victims like Lennox remain trapped in the reality of such tragedies. And until the United States secures its borders and ends the incentives that cause a person to continue illegally migrating, these types of tragic stories will remain all too common.