Following a series of News 8 reports, Dallas County has implemented an emergency stop-gap action to keep accused felons from being deported before going to trial.
Hundreds of accused murders, rapists and child molesters have avoided prosecution in Dallas over the past two decades.
"Sylvia" is an American citizen who lives in constant fear that her husband, Jose Salvador Tinajero, will find her.
"He had always told me before that if I ever left him that before I walked out my door, I was only going to go out in a body bag," she said. "He made my babies suffer for a long time. I wanted him to feel the same pain that we did."
But that's not going to happen.
Tinajero, a Mexican citizen, had been behind bars, facing the possibility of life in prison if convicted on charges of repeatedly molesting their children.
But instead of prosecution in Dallas County, News 8 learned that Tinajero was loaded on a federal bus, driven to Mexico and set free.
Until Sylvia saw the reports on Channel 8, she thought she was the only one dealing with this problem.
"Somebody needs to hear this and do something," she said. "They're not paying for what they've done. They're not paying for the wrongdoing they caused families or other people."
As News 8 has reported, citizens of a foreign country often post bond and are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Now, we've found that problems in the bonding process play a large role in making deportation of accused felons possible.
It starts when a defendant is booked into jail and goes before a magistrate judge. Magistrates don't hear cases, but it's their job to determine charges and set the bond.
The magistrate sets the bond by matching a defendant's alleged crime with a price on a suggested bond schedule.
In response to News 8 reports, Dallas County's judges took an unprecedented, emergency action to change the county's bond schedule.
From now on, any prisoner with an "immigration hold" who is slated for possible deportation, faces an automatic $100,000 bond on all felony charges. The higher bond is designed to make it harder for illegal aliens to escape justice.
It's a problem that has existed for years.
"What I think it does is avoid these loophole-type cases where somebody unfortunately gets out on bond and is deported before an officer has an opportunity to question the suspect or submit additional evidence for consideration," said former U.S. Attorney Richard Roper.
Sylvia is pleased about the new, higher bonds, but she wants people in power to know that their long time failure to act continues to hurt real people.
"They need to come together ... to bring these people to trial," she said.
This week, Sylvia's request to renew a restraining order against her husband was denied.
She was told that unless she knows where he is, it it's impossible to deliver the required paperwork to him.
"There is no justice," Sylvia said, "especially for my girls, my family. There is none."
E-mail dschechter@wfaa.com
