I mean after all, just because they are charged with drug offenses doesn't mean that they shoud be kicked out of the country, does it -- even if they entered illegally?

The Denver district attorney's office under gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter approved plea bargains that prevented the deportation of illegal and legal immigrants charged with drug, assault and other crimes.

The office allowed defendants to plead guilty to trespassing on agricultural land instead of the crimes they actually were accused of 152 times from 1998 through 2004. Other counties - Jefferson, Adams and Arapahoe - had only 75 convictions combined for the crime, according to court records.

Former Denver District Attorney Norm Early, who was Ritter's predecessor, laughed when he heard about the farm charges in urban Denver.

"I reviewed all my case dispositions, and I never remember that coming up," he said.

A review of 15 of the agricultural trespass cases in Denver showed that heroin and cocaine charges, theft of motor vehicles and domestic violence crimes - miles away from any farm or open land - were transformed into agricultural trespass.

"This plea agreement was reached with the the specific purpose of not pleading guilty to an offense that would subject (the defendant) to deportation proceedings," wrote a defense attorney in a motion filed in a Denver court Oct. 11, 2000.

The defendant, Ernesto Leon Reyes, was a resident alien who was initially charged with five drug counts related to his possession and intention to distribute 2,000 grams of methamphetamine.

If convicted of the drug charge, Reyes could have been deported after serving time. Instead, after pleading guilty to the trespass on agricultural land charge, Reyes received probation and stayed in the United States.

Did you folks get that one -- drug dealers remained in this country because the DA's office didn't want to subject them to the "hardship" of going back where they came from. Sounds like prosecutorial malfeasance to me.

And now Bill Ritter and the Democrats want him to be Governor of Colorado.

Vote Republican in Colorado and the rest of the country for every office -- public safety and America's borders depend on it.