Illegal Alien Gets Maximum Sentence For Felony DUI

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Honduran illegal immigrant Rovilson Rivera Hernandez has been sentenced to fifteen years in a South Carolina prison after pleading guilty to felony driving under the influence (DUI) resulting in great bodily injury.

Hernandez has a long record of breaking both immigration and traffic laws – with a driving record dating back to 2008 which includes an arrest for driving while intoxicated as well as multiple convictions for speeding, diving without a license and driving under suspension.

In October of 2019, Hernandez permanently altered the course of his life – and the life of a 20-year-old woman – when he drunkenly crossed over the median of Highway 78, striking her vehicle head-on and trapping her inside.

As emergency responders struggled to extricate the woman from the vehicle, she suffered from multiple open fractures that necessitated numerous surgeries and a lengthy hospital stay to repair. Once discharged, she required the assistance of home health services to relearn how to walk.

According to the North Charleston, S.C. police department, Hernandez told officers “he consumed 8-10 beers before getting behind the wheel.” Hernandez registered a blood alcohol level of .23 more than ninety minutes after the collision.

***

***

After the collision, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents returned Hernandez to Honduras. Prosecutors anticipated his likely re-entry and obtained a bench warrant for his arrest, which proved prescient when Hernandez once again illegally entered America – only to be immediately apprehended and transported back to South Carolina for criminal prosecution.

Assistant S.C. ninth circuit solicitor Jordan Norvell called Hernandez’s driving history “prolifically terrible” and termed the accident “foreseeable and preventable.”

Ninth circuit solicitor Scarlett Wilson praised judge Roger Young‘s decision to give Hernandez the maximum sentence in a press statement issued from her office.

“Judge Young recognized that the perilous driving history of the defendant, saw that this was foreseeable based on that record, and sentenced him accordingly,” she noted.

***

RELATED | PROPS TO JUGE ROGER YOUNG SR.

***

This news outlet has previously praised Young’s willingness to hand down appropriate sentences in spite of the Palmetto State’s well-earned reputation for excessive judicial leniency enabling violent criminals to repeatedly re-offend.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections estimates the annual cost to house an inmate was $32,247 in fiscal year 2021-22, meaning that if Hernandez serves his whole sentence, his incarceration will cost the taxpayer nearly half a million dollars.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk recently addressed the untenable costs imposed on society by illegal aliens in his wide-ranging conversation with former president Donald Trump earlier this week.

Musk called illegal immigration a “fundamental existential issue for the United States” – reasoning that because “America is only about four or five percent of the population of Earth, it would only take a few percent of the rest of the population of earth to overwhelm everything.”

***

***

Trump noted that numerous countries encourage illegal immigration into America specifically because of the high cost of incarcerating individuals.

“They take them out of jails” because it is “very expensive to maintain them,” Trump alleged before promising to execute the “largest deportation in history” to address the problem.

Count on FITSNews to continue chronicling the costs of illegal immigration on our state and nation in the lead-up to this year’s presidential election and beyond.

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

(Via: Travis Bell)

Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.

***

WANNA SOUND OFF?

Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.