Dem Candidate John Hickenlooper’s Illegal Migrant Shame

Most Americans understand that illegal immigrants pose a criminal threat to our personal safety. Illegals murdering police officers sadly seems to be a particularly common theme. With former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper officially throwing his hat in the ring as the latest Democrat to run for president, it is only proper to recall how he made a good chunk of his fortune by hiring illegals, one of whom turned out to be a cop killer.

A Slaying in Colorado

In 2005, Raul Gomez-Garcia, an illegal alien, shot and killed Denver police detective Donald Young and wounded detective John Bishop. Young left behind a grieving wife and two young daughters, who are left to grow up without a father.

It turned out that Gomez-Garcia had been employed as a dishwasher at a restaurant co-owned by Denver mayor and future state governor Hickenlooper. He was hardly an exception. The Denver Post reported in 2005 that Hickenlooper's Wynkoop restaurant group had in the previous year employed 107 people who did not have matching Social Security numbers. Wynkoop chief executive Lee Driscoll admitted to the paper that the company had had its "head in the sand" on checking the legal status of its workers until the onslaught of negative publicity following the killing had forced its hand.

The now-defunct Rocky Mountain News reported that Driscoll disclosed that Wynkoop employed more than 500 employees in a business with high turnover. This would mean that roughly one-fifth of the employees in Hickenlooper's restaurant business were quite likely illegals.

Hickenlooper sought to distance himself from the controversy by stating that he had placed the company in a blind trust on becoming Denver mayor. Nevertheless, he referred to Gomez-Garcia's evil deed as a shock to his corporate "family." "Certainly, in the restaurant business everyone is like family," he said, the Rocky Mountain News reported. "It's stunning to believe someone a part of the family could commit such a heinous crime."

The paper reported that Gomez-Garcia presented a resident-alien card when he applied for a job at the Cherry Cricket restaurant co-owned by Hickenlooper. "You could see that this card was fake," a police source told the Rocky Mountain News, describing the card as crumbling and typewritten.

"Everyone knows there's an issue of illegal aliens working a bunch of jobs in this country, and particularly in the restaurant business," Wynkoop exec Driscoll shrugged. This is precisely the issue that should come back to haunt Hickenlooper if his 2020 campaign gains traction.

Blood Money

Hickenlooper made a rich and comfortable life for himself from his restaurant business. Evidently, it was an operation fueled to a strikingly significant degree by illegal-alien labor. An American police officer who put his life on the line for the community in which Hickenlooper's restaurants plied their profitable trade was murdered along the way to that pile of cash.

Gomez-Garcia refused to appear for his own sentencing. "He was a coward then; he is a coward now,” detective Young's widow Kelly said through tears at the sentencing, The Denver Post reported.

"I'm shocked that Gomez-Garcia is not here," Denver District Judge Larry Naves declared. "He approached the officers from the back in a cowardly fashion and the fact he can't face the witnesses (today) is consistent with that kind of cowardly act." The criminal was given 80 years.

Gomez-Garcia is a heartless killer who couldn't even express remorse to those whose lives he impacted so horribly. But what are we to make of our fellow citizens who aid and abet the underground lives of a hundred or more illegals like him without regard to the effect this has on the local populace? And do it in the sole pursuit of money? If he appears on a televised debate platform during the Democratic primaries, it sure would be nice to see Hickenlooper get asked those questions.