Don Rosenberg is a self-described "lifelong, very liberal Democrat," but he opposes President Barack Obama's plan to issue an executive order halting deportations for thousands of illegal immigrants.
Rosenberg's son, Drew, was killed in 2010 by a man in the country illegally who accidentally hit him on his motorcycle. Drew Rosenberg did not die from the initial crash, which took place at slow speed, but when Roberto Galo tried to flee the scene he ran over him twice, finally stopping with his car on Rosenberg's abdomen.
Don Rosenberg says his campaign initially had nothing to do with illegal immigration. He simply wanted to get people off the street who were driving without licenses.
But as his son's case progressed, he learned that Galo was in the country illegally. It didn't help when Galo's charges were reduced from vehicular homicide to vehicular manslaughter.
Galo served only 43 days in jail, and was not deported after being freed.
"The word we got back from [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] was that he had only committed . . . 'one crime of moral terpitude' – which, of course, sounds much better than he's only killed one person," Rosenberg said Thursday on Fox News Channel's
"Your World with Neil Cavuto."
Rosenberg's persistence eventually got Galo deported to Honduras in 2012.
In a letter to Obama, Rosenberg urges him not to sign an order stopping some deportations.
"Before you illegally say, 'Welcome to America' to those who have caused so much pain and suffering, on your next trip to California let me take you to Drew's grave, and you tell him this is the right thing to do," Rosenberg says in the letter.
"My son and all of the others are considered collateral damage in the quest for votes and campaign contributions," Rosenberg writes. "Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime."
Rosenberg told Cavuto he still considers himself a liberal. "I just don't consider myself a Democrat anymore."
He said that because of the politics of immigration reform, left-leaning media have ignored him.
"They won't talk to me," he said.
In addition to fighting illegal immigration, Rosenberg continues with his original effort to stop anyone without a driver's license from getting behind the wheel.
He says that his son was one of 3,000 people killed by illegal immigrant drivers in 2010, but that more than 7,000 people a year die from accidents caused by people without valid licenses.
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