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The man charged in the death of a passenger in the van he was driving was drunk and speeding last week when he lost control of the vehicle, which hit a guardrail and a bridge abutment before it rolled and caught fire, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Nemias Garcia-Velasco, 32, has been charged with motor vehicle homicide in the death of Silvano Torres, 58. A judge set his bail at $2 million.

When he asked for a high bail amount, prosecutor Ryan Lindberg of the Douglas County Attorneys Office said Garcia-Velasco, who is from Mexico, was in the United States illegally. After the hearing, Lindberg said Garcia-Velasco had been removed from the U.S. a total of seven times five "voluntary returns" in 2005 and following two deportation hearings, in 2009 and 2011. Lindberg noted that Garcia-Velasco once was convicted of having false citizenship papers.

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said "it's not unusual" for people who come to the United States illegally to return several times.

Under a voluntary return, Rusnok said, the person is saying, "'Yes, I'm in your country illegally and, yes, you can return me to (my country of origin).'"

The vast majority of voluntary returns are to Mexico, Rusnok said.

Garcia-Velasco was going over 100 mph about 1 p.m. last Wednesday when he lost control of a 2001 Dodge Ram work van as he headed west on Interstate 80 near the Interstate 680 split, Lindberg said. Garcia-Velasco told officers he had consumed 12 beers the previous evening into the morning of the crash, the prosecutor said.

Garcia-Velascos blood-alcohol level was .243 when it was checked at a hospital following the crash, Lindberg said.

Torres was riding unrestrained in the cargo area of the van and was declared dead at the scene. Front-seat passenger Jesus I. Gonzalez, 16, was treated at the hospital and released the day of the crash. Garcia-Velasco was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center with severe burns. He later was released from the hospital and booked into jail.

Rosa Flores, who had been dating Torres for about a year, said she last heard from her boyfriend just before noon last Wednesday.

Torres texted her that it was too hot to continue patching a roof, and that he would call her when he got home.

That afternoon and for two days, she kept calling and messaging him, with no answer. She saw photos of the burning van and had a sinking feeling that it was the work van Torres used.

I was just devastated, she said. There are so many unsolved things, so many questions. I was so hurt, I was so upset.

Flores said she is angry that Garcia-Velasco allegedly was drinking and driving.

If he knew that he was drinking and he knew that he wasnt able to drive, why did he? she said. He didnt stop to think about the consequences of what could happen. Its not fair that he took the life of somebody else.

Torres was a loving man who spoke fondly of his two daughters and son who lived in Mexico, Flores said. Torres had documentation to be in the United States, she said, and had lived in Omaha for about six years after working in other states. She said she does not know Garcia-Velasco.

Funeral services have not been scheduled, Flores said. Relatives are waiting to take his body back to Mexico.

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Illegal immigrant was drunk and speeding before deadly crash at I ... - Omaha World-Herald

In a report by the Pueblo Chieftain, sources told the local newspaper that illegal immigrants, fearful of being prosecuted and deported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are self-deporting primarily back to Mexico.

Sources report that some undocumented families have left the area for Mexico rather than run the risk of having a parent arrested or even sentenced to prison for immigration violations, the newspaper reported.

According to the report, families began self-deporting after a total of 14 illegal aliens in the Pueblo, Colorado area had been arrested and deported.

Many of the individuals arrested had previously come to the U.S. on an H-2A foreign guest worker visa, but overstayed and had been living in the country illegally for years.

In one case, 48-year-old Benito Rubio, who died in federal custody before he was set to be deported, was facing felony charges after illegally remaining in the U.S. despite federal orders to deport.

The self-deportation of illegal aliens comes just as Attorney General Jeff Sessions led the charge in the Trump Administration to reinstate criminal prosecution for first-time border-crossers, a break from the lax open borders policies of the Obama Administration, as Breitbart Texas reported.

Previously, first-time border-crossers were deported to their native countries. Under Trump, those illegal aliens are being prosecuted, alongside repeat offenders.

First-time border-crossers are being convicted with misdemeanors. If they illegally re-enter, they will be hit with felony charges. Under the Obama administration, former Attorney General Eric Holder actually halted all prosecutions in some border sectors.

John Binder is a reporterfor Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at@JxhnBinder.

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Illegal Aliens Self-deporting amid Stricter Enforcement, Says Report - Breitbart News

BOSTON (AP)

Europeans often hid in plain sight as Latin Americans, Asians and others living illegally in America were sent packing. But now they're starting to realize they are not immune to President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, and they're worried.

The number of Europeans deported this federal fiscal year from the United States could surpass last fiscal year's total, according to figures provided to The Associated Press by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

From Oct. 2, 2016 through June 24, more than 1,300 Europeans have been removed, compared with 1,450 during all of federal fiscal year 2016 -- the last under President Barack Obama. The agency didn't provide estimates broken down by calendar year.

In San Jose, California, an HIV-positive Russian asylum seeker faces possible deportation after overstaying his visa. In Chicago, Polish and Irish community groups say they're seeing inquiries about immigration and citizenship-related services surge as people seek legal protections.

And in Boston, John Cunningham, a well-known Irishman who had overstayed his visa by 14 years, was sent back to Ireland last week, sending shivers through the city's sizeable Irish expat community.

"People are very, very concerned and lying low," says Ronnie Millar, of the Boston-based Irish International Immigrant Center. "The message is that if it can happen to John, it can happen to anyone."

Europeans comprise about 440,000 of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Since just before Trump was elected last November, the U.S. has deported 167,350 foreigners, compared with 240,255 in all of fiscal year 2016. Immigrants from Latin America make up the most by far, with Mexico leading the way at about 93,000.

Among Europeans, Romanians make up the largest share, with 193 deportations so far in fiscal year 2017. Behind are Spain at 117; the United Kingdom at 102; Russia at 81; and Poland at 74. Those countries were also tops last fiscal year; Romania had 176, United Kingdom 160, Poland 160, Spain 115 and Russia 94.

Immigrant advocates say they've been urging individuals to know their rights if they're stopped and for parents to make arrangements for their children in the event they're detained.

"The worst aspect of these numbers from our perspective is that our community organizations do not know who is being deported and why, and are unable to send immigration attorneys to assist them," says Dmitri Daniel Glinski, president of the Russian-Speaking Community Council of Manhattan and the Bronx.

In California, San Jose resident Denis Davydov was detained for more than a month after returning from a vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

He was eventually released after his lawyer argued Davydov was legally allowed to re-enter because he's currently seeking political asylum for being gay and HIV-positive. But he could be forced to return to Russia if his request is denied.

Davydov says the experience of being detained - and the uncertainty it has thrust into his asylum application - has left him feeling vulnerable.

"Before this, I thought I was a doing everything right, but I'm afraid now that doing everything right is not enough. I don't know what else I can do," he said. "I feel like it can happen again to me anywhere. In the airport or in the street."

At the Polish American Association in Chicago, executive director Magdalena Dolas said her organization has been asked to give talks about what residents should do if immigration officials show up at their doorstep.

"People are worrying about their rights," she said. "It shows there is awareness but that there is also anxiety."

The Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Center has been receiving triple the number of inquiries on immigration and legal service matters these days as it did a year ago, said Michael Collins, executive director.

There have been 18 deportations among Irish nationwide in the current fiscal year, compared with 26 in all of last fiscal year, according to the ICE data.

Cunningham's case has still become a cautionary tale among Irish expats in Boston's Irish community.

"The rumor has gone around, 'Don't go in any courthouses, and if you hear a knock on your door and you're not expecting anyone, don't answer it," said Benny Murphy, a 32-year-old bartender in Boston who had been living in this country illegally until about three years ago, when he married a woman who is a U.S. citizen.

Many believe Cunningham simply forgot the golden rule of living in the shadows: Keep your head down.

Months before his arrest, he appeared on a national news show in Ireland to share his experience of living illegally in America.

Cunningham, who declined to comment for this article through his lawyer, also wasn't squeaky clean. He had a warrant for his arrest for failing to show up in court over a $1,300 dispute with a customer of his electrical contracting business, and state records show he wasn't a licensed electrician.

Advocates complain Trump, in taking a hardline against immigration scofflaws, is sweeping up many hardworking, taxpaying people, many of whom have raised children who are now U.S. citizens.

The Obama administration, in contrast, focused immigration enforcement on the most serious criminals.

Many of those living here illegally were lulled into a "false sense of security" by the Obama years, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors more restrictive immigration policies.

"This is a return to more traditional immigration enforcement," Vaughan said. "There needs to be some level of across-the-board, routine enforcement, in the same way your local police department doesn't focus only on murder, robbery and rape. They also have traffic patrols."

But Ali Noorani, executive director of the immigrant-rights group National Immigration Forum, argued the administration is overdoing it.

"It's pretty clear ICE is removing anyone undocumented they come across," he said. "The bigger issue is that the Trump administration is wasting really valuable law enforcement resources on many people who aren't a public safety threat, whether they're Irish, Latino, Asian or otherwise."

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Immigration crackdown leads to deportations of Europeans - KCRA Sacramento

Vice President Mike Pence issued a statement today about Donald Trump Jr.s email dump that confirmed POTUS son accepted an invitation to meet with a Russian government attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Trump Jr. this morning released what he said was his entire email chain with publicist Rob Goldstone, setting up the meeting. President Donald Trumps oldest son said he was doing so in an effort to be totally transparent. The New York Times was about to publish yet another report on this meeting with Veselnitskaya who would come to Trump Tower bearing high level, sensitive dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump including the email chain.

The newspaper first reported word of this meeting over the weekend, adding Trump Jr. to the pantheon of Trump associates who forgot to acknowledge meeting with Russians until reminded by reading about it in the media. That list also includes former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and current First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trumps former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn

In his statement, issued by his press secretary, Marc Lotter, Pence reminds people the meeting took place at a time when he had absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. The meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort, took place on June 9. Candidate Trump named Pence his running mate on July 15.

Here is Pences statement: The Vice President is working every day to advance the Presidents agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do. The Vice president was not aware of the meeting. He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket.

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Veep Mike Pence Puts Distance Between Himself And Donald Trump Family - Deadline

In Robert A. Caros The Passage of Power, the most recent volume of his majestic biography of President Lyndon Johnson, he recalls the mental machinations LBJ went through before accepting the vice president slot on the 1960 Democratic ticket led by John F. Kennedy.

LBJ didnt like the Kennedys, but weighed the merits of the number-two job in relation to his own stalled but ferocious presidential aspirations. He even instructed his staff to look up how many presidents had died during their term since 1860 five out of 18. Later, when asked why he took the offer, LBJ said, I looked it up: one out of every four presidents has died in office. Im a gamblin man, darlin, and this is the only chance I got.

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I imagine Mike Pence making similar calculations before becoming Donald Trumps running mate last summer. This is not to imply that Trump isnt the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, as his longtime physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, declared with suspiciously Trumpian hyperbole last year. Instead, Pence was likely banking on the chaotic Trump campaign birthing a calamitous Trump presidency. With the administration buckling under daily accusations and investigations, Pence is acting like a man ready to move on up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The New York Times recently reported that Pence is chatting with deep-pocketed money men like Charles Koch, and hosting dinners with his wife, Karen, for wealthy donors at the vice presidents mansion. In May, Pence launched his own PAC, the Great America Committee. While its name echoes Trumps campaign slogan, no previous sitting vice president has ever formed such a separate political organization. An unnamed Pence surrogate told NBC News that any chatter that the PAC is meant to bolster the veeps 2020 plans is misguided.

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Thats probably true. Pence likely envisions his White House scheme coming into focus long before 2020. Behind that frozen smile, he has to despise Trumps say-and-tweet-anything belligerence, multiple marriages, and situational Christianity. By comparison, Pence comes off as controlled, steely, and sane. He looks like a 1990s basic cable TV version of an American president.

Everybodys got to eat, right?

Pence behaves as if hes immune to all the drama swirling around his boss, or at least sufficiently out of the loop to seem reasonably clean. Yet like others in the Trump administration, he has also lawyered up, hiring his own attorney to represent him in the special counsel investigation and congressional inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Whether Pence will be ensnared in this administrations bottomless troubles remains, for now, smoke from a distant fire. This much is already certain: Pence would be an awful president. The man who describes himself as a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order, is a hard-line theocrat with more respect for the Bible than the Constitution. As a US congressman, then Indianas governor, he proposed policies that threatened the lives and rights of women and the LGBT community. Even in a reliably red state, Pences medieval beliefs, especially a so-called religious freedom law to legalize discrimination, were so denounced that the Indianapolis Star ran a front-page editorial under the massive headline FIX THIS NOW. The state legislature eventually watered down the anti-LGBT language enough to curtail the economic backlash.

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If Trump is ultimately removed from office, it cant happen soon enough for Pence, who always looks like hes humming Hail to the Chief to himself whenever he walks into a room. Should that happen, Trumps detractors would need to gird themselves for a new fight with a man whose best qualification for the job is that hes not Trump. While thats certainly true, saying Pence would be a better president than Trump is like claiming its better to be mauled by a black bear than a brown bear the disastrous impact on this already reeling nation would be exactly the same.

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Mike Pence looks like he's ready to pounce on the presidency - The Boston Globe