Barletta: ‘Illegal aliens got away with murder’ (Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice)

By WADE MALCOLM
Staff Writer

Whenever asked to justify the need for his controversial ordinance, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta told the tragic tale of two illegal immigrants allegedly killing 29-year-old Derek Kichline.

With the murder charges against Dominican nationals Joan Romero and Pedro Cabrera now dismissed, those details were never proven in court.

But that won’t change how Barletta tells the story.

“Today, a young man is still dead, and illegal aliens got away with murder,” he said Friday. “The Illegal Immigration Relief Act can’t bring back Derek Kichline, but it could help save someone else’s life.”

The already high-profile murder case became part of a larger political debate when civil rights groups challenged the ordinance’s constitutionality in federal court shortly after city council passed it in July 2006.

In numerous public statements since then, Barletta called Kichline’s murder the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” motivating him to propose the law targeting landlords and employers doing business with illegal immigrants.

As Barletta’s cause gained national attention, so did the Kichline case. Barletta recounted the slaying of Kichline — who was “minding his own business” and “wasn’t a trouble maker” — for newspapers across the country and on national television.

“If others had done their jobs by keeping this murderous thug and his cohorts out of the country, out of Hazleton, Derek Kichline may still be alive today,” Barletta told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on immigration reform in July 2006.

A city attorney used the story of the murder in the first few lines of his opening statement when the lawsuit went to trial, but the outcome of the Kichline case will impact the ordinance only in the battle for public opinion. Attorneys on both sides said Friday’s events will have little, if any, effect on how U.S. District Judge James M. Munley will rule on the ordinance’s constitutionality, a decision expected to come this month.

Still, an opponent of Barletta said the dismissed charges are another example of the mayor rushing to use illegal immigrants as scapegoats for the city’s problems.

“This dismissal of charges adds to the long list of discredited claims Barletta has made in the course of demonizing undocumented immigrants for allegedly destroying Hazleton,” said attorney Witold “Vic” Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups suing the city.

Barletta called Walczak’s statement “disgusting.”

“I find it repulsive that (he) would defend men who participated in the brutal murder of a resident in my city,” he said.

Barletta’s views on the murder case are so pervasive, defense lawyers feared it could have harmed Romero and Cabrera’s chances of getting a fair trial.

“The dangers that we saw were in the selection of a jury untainted by external forces,” said attorney Joseph Cosgrove, who filed a change of venue motion which was not ruled upon before the charges were dropped.

Even with most of the evidence in the case now unraveled, Barletta said he would not change any of his previous statements on the Kichline murder. He is convinced Kichline would be alive if Romero and Cabrera never entered the country.

“It makes me angry,” Barletta said. “It really does. It makes me hurt, disappointed, and I can only imagine how it makes the Kichlines feel.”