Thousands of cars are towed each year in the state under those circumstances,
ESCONDIDO, California (AP) — Delfino Aldama was fixing a customer’s brakes this month when his smartphone chimed with a text message that tipped him to a police checkpoint more than an hour before officers began stopping motorists. The self-employed auto mechanic frantically called friends with the location and drove an alternate route home.
The Mexico native had reason to be alarmed: He does not have a driver’s license because he is in the United States illegally, and it would cost about $1,400 to get his Nissan Frontier pickup back from the towing company if it got confiscated at the checkpoint. He has breathed a little easier since he began getting blast text messages two years ago from activists who scour streets to find checkpoints as they are being set up.
The cat-and-mouse game ends Jan. 1 when a new law takes effect inCalifornia to prohibit police from impounding cars at sobriety checkpoints if a motorist’s only offense is being an unlicensed driver. Thousands of cars are towed each year in the state under those circumstances, hitting pocketbooks of illegal immigrantsespecially hard.
When Aldama’s 1992 Honda Civic was towed from a checkpoint years ago, he quit his job frying chickens at a fast-food restaurant because he had no way to make the 40-mile (65-kilometer) round trip to work. He abandoned the car rather than pay about $1,200 in fees.
“A car is a necessity, it’s not a luxury,” said the 35-year-old Aldama, who lives in Escondido with his wife, who is a legal resident, and their 5-year-old son, a U.S. citizen.
Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat who tried unsuccessfully to restore driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants after California revoked the privilege in 1993, said he introduced the bill to ban towing after learning the notoriously corrupt city of Bell raked in big fees from unlicensed drivers at checkpoints.More at Source
September 5, 2003 — A grinning former MEChA member and vehement Mexican reconquista State Senator “One Bill Gil” Cedillo holds the freshly signed illegal alien driver’s license bill (SB60) as a gleeful radical pest Assemblyman Fabian Nunez looks on. Seated is the pandering failed Governor Gray Davis, a traitor who was successfully recalled on October 7, 2003 (the first Calif. Governor in history to be removed — he was replaced by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger).Mayor James ‘L.A. is a Mexican City’ Hahn, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, andrabid reconquista Antonio Villaraigosa are in the background. SB60 was eventually repealed in December, 2003, but the evil Cedillo vowed to bring it back…. and he did just that in February, 2004 as SB1160. He has since said that he will keep pushing to reward pesky criminal invaders until the day he expires.
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