Federal immigration agent Cory Voorhis sat at the defense table in federal court Tuesday, but opening statements by his lawyer indicated that the legal team would try to put the actions of Gov. Bill Ritter and the city of Denver on trial.
Bill Taylor, attorney for the special agent, said his client was “shocked, angered, and yes, bewildered” when he read statements by Ritter, then a candidate for governor, in an August 2006 newspaper article saying that when he was Denver district attorney, his office had always been tough on illegal immigration.
Voorhis’ experience as an immigration agent, and as someone who worked at the Denver County Jail for three years, was that legal and illegal immigrants were regularly pleaded out by Ritter’s office from the crimes they actually committed to a fictional charge of agricultural trespass — a non-deportable offense for legal immigrants. (Records show Denver defendants, including illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens, were given this plea 152 times from 1998 through 2004).
“Defense attorneys asked the jail to put immigration holds on their clients because they would get better deals,” Taylor told the jury, and an alternate, made up of nine men and four women. “U.S. citizens claimed to be illegal immigrants to get a better deal.”
So Voorhis, Taylor said, picked up the phone and called the congressional office of Bob Beauprez, who was running against Ritter for governor.
Eventually, Voorhis met with Beauprez campaign manager John Marshall and information disclosed by Voorhis made it into a Beauprez campaign ad. One ad featured Walter Ramo, an illegal immigrant who pleaded to agricultural trespass in Denver after being charged with possession with intent to distribute heroin. Later, Ramo was charged with molesting a minor in California.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Phillips said Voorhis used a restricted federal database to help Beauprez’s campaign. That led to two federal misdemeanor charges against Voorhis.
Phillips asked the jury to try to ignore the often explosive issue of illegal immigration, plea deals made by Ritter’s office and the politics between Beauprez and Ritter — except when it came to Voorhis’ intent.
“What was in his mind?” Phillips said to the jury.
Taylor argued that Voorhis didn’t look up or give out information from the database that was unauthorized. An indication of that, Taylor said, was that Voorhis knew his searches could be tracked, but still used his own database sign-on, making no effort to cover his tracks. The Beauprez campaign had to hire a Texas investigator to substantiate that Ramo, using an alias, was the same person as the man arrested in California, he said.
The trial is expected to last another week. Marshall is expected to be called to testify by the prosecution today. Gray Buckley, the former inspector in charge of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s crime information center, is expected to be called by the defense.
Karen Crummy: 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it said that illegal immigrants, as well as legal immigrants, were regularly pleaded out by Bill Ritter’s office when he was Denver District Attorney, from the crimes they actually committed to a fictional charge of agricultural trespass, a non-deportable offense. The story now reflects that agricultural trespass would amount to a non-deportable offense only for those foreign-born residents in the U.S. legally. Illegal immigrants are always subject to deportation.
