Illegal Immigrant Who Killed Minnesota Father of 10 Deported to El Salvador

An illegal immigrant who struck and killed a Minnesota father of 10 last year was deported to his home country of El Salvador, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Tuesday.

Jose Orlando Vasquez-Guillen was 19-years-old at the time of the April 3, 2019 crash that resulted in the death of 52-year-old St. Paul resident Mark O’Gara. Vasquez-Guillen entered the country illegally at the age of 15 in January 2016 and was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge just seven months later after failing to appear for a hearing, but he never left the country.

According to criminal charges obtained by Fox 9, Vasquez-Guillen had a blood alcohol content of 0.149, nearly twice the legal limit, at the time of the crash. O’Gara, who was married with 10 children and six grandchildren, was pronounced dead at the scene. He was struck by Vasquez-Guillen’s car around 1:30 a.m. while backing out of a driveway on Concord Street.

State officials told The Star Tribune at the time of the accident that Vasquez-Guillen never had a Minnesota driver’s license or state identification card.

Records obtained by Breitbart News showed that the President Barack Obama’s administration released Vasquez-Guillen in March 2016 after he was taken into custody for illegally crossing the border. As a condition of his release, he was expected to appear in immigration court but never did.

Vasquez-Guillen pleaded guilty to one count of alcohol-related criminal vehicular homicide on December 20 and was transferred back into ICE custody. The federal agency deported him on Monday.

Vasquez-Guillen initially attempted to blame the crash on O’Gara, saying the other car had pulled out in front of him.

In a similar case, a Guatemalan woman who was convicted in 2008 on four counts of criminal vehicular homicide was indicted in December in a Minneapolis federal court on three counts related to identity theft and illegal re-entry. Olga Marina Franco del Cid spent eight years in prison for causing the deaths of four school children when she ran a stop sign in Cottonwood, Minnesota and crashed into a school bus, The Minnesota Sun reported.

– – –

Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].