Driver Who Injured 6-Year-Old Had Been Sent Back to Mexico 17 Times in 14 Years

A driver who injured a six-year-old during a May 6 hit-and-run has been identified as Constantino Banda Acosta, an illegal immigrant who had been sent back to Mexico 17 times during the past 14 years.

Some of those 17 returns to Mexico were voluntary and some were deportations.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that there were times during the 14 years in which Banda re-entered the U.S. three days after being deported. He made it into the country at times by “crossing the border fence and at least once in the trunk of a car.”

Three of Banda’s deportations followed arrests on state charges, including a DUI and domestic violence.

He was last deported in January 2017, after being apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Tecate. They do not know how he re-entered the U.S. after that deportation, only that he did and he was here to hurt Lennox Lake in an car accident May 6. Lake was kept in the hospital nearly three weeks and was released May 23 with “with deep skull fractures and also battling infections, rash and fever.”

Border Patrol Agent Terry Shigg is the president of the San Diego chapter of the National Border Patrol Council and says Banda exemplifies how a lack of prosecutions and prison time actually emboldens repeat immigration offenders. He said:

It’s one of those things you get so used to that it becomes the norm, to know that multiple times throughout my career I’ve returned the same group of people (to Mexico) multiple times on the same day. It’s frustrating. It’s almost as if there’s a loophole, a fault in the system and no one wants to fix it. Recidivists come through and there’s laws on the books to stop them. … After about the 10th time, a flag should go up that in about three months this guy is going to be back, because that’s what happened in the past.

The Union-Tribune reports that the lack of prosecutions and prison time is expected to change under President Trump.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.