David Gonzalez-Benitez and Paulino Rivera are both being held on ICE detainers in the Dane County Jail. They are accused of beating and stabbing a man almost to the point of death outside a bar. The victim had lacerations all over his body, including to his liver, and was left to die in a parking lot, the criminal complaint says.
Each day, from Sept. 25 through the presidential election, we tell you about a non-citizen currently in a Wisconsin jail who is accused of committing a horrific crime. ICE placed immigration detainers on each of them. We are highlighting a range of serious crimes.
Real victims, communities, and taxpayers are paying the price of weak Biden/Harris border policies, which are abetted by politicians like U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Every state is a border state.
FILE #10
The Accused: David Gonzalez-Benitez and Paulino Rivera
Charges: (attempted per CCAP) 1st degree intentional homicide (for each defendant). Sentencing in February.
Previous cases in Wisconsin: Gonzalez-Benitez, Operating without a valid license in 2021 (forfeiture)
Rivera: None
Details: The accusations involved a stabbing and beating that occurred outside a Madison bar. The victim lived but was badly injured.
The criminal complaint alleges the following:
The officer was dispatched on Aug. 19, 2023, at 1:43 a.m. to Antler’s Tavern in the City of Madison for a disturbance. The caller observed “two guys beating up another in the parking lot” for about two minutes.
The officer saw a man, later identified by a Mexican Consular ID card, lying on his side. He had significant injuries. His shirt was torn in several players in the upper chest area. Below his belly button was a laceration that was about an inch in diameter. The officer saw six other lacerations.
“As Officer Heche removed MLB’s shirt, he observed that the most significant of the lacerations to his torso area were the ones that he immediately observed by his belly button
and one near his front left armpit area. There was also a significant laceration on MLB’s left
pectoral area,” the complaint says, describing the victim’s injuries.
The victim also had significant facial injuries including swollen eyes, nose and mouth. Two pieces of his teeth were on the front of his chest. There was a fix to six inch laceration on his left wrist and blood near his head. He was actively bleeding.
He had slow breathing and a very faint pulse but the officer applied a tourniquet and obtained medical attention. The victim’s mouth was significantly swollen and his condition was life-threatening as he had a laceration to his liver and significant chest lacerations.
Police spoke to a witness who was shaking, citing the trauma. He said he was a bartender and while closing the bar he saw people in the parking lot. He saw two men beating another man who was on the ground. He began recording it. He waited until they left to call 911. He said two of the subjects were assaulting the victim while a third rummaged through the victim’s pockets.
A suspect beat the victim with a closed fist. A male in a grey shirt struck the victim 15-20 times, mostly to the head. They were not patrons.
He said the suspects were “brutal too, just pounding on him.” He said it looked like they beating him to death with “nonstop brutality.” Officers followed a blood droplet trail to an apartment complex.
David Gonzalez-Benitez answered and presented a Wisconsin driver’s license. A second suspect, Paulino Rivera, also identified by his Wisconsin driver’s license, was arrested and charged.
Rivera was primarily a Spanish speaker. He had a laceration on his head. Gonzalez Beneitz had a wound on his shoulder. He provided a false date of birth and they needed a Spanish speaking officer. He said he did not want to make a statement.
Gonzalez-Benitez later changed his mind and gave a statement. He stated he was at the bar with Rivera. “Gonzalez Benitez stated he was talking to an American while Rivera was talking to another Hispanic male whom he did not know. Gonzalez Benitez stated he does not speak English but was cheering and toasting with the American, and consumed about 5 beers. Rivera and the male. . . Gonzalez Benitez stated he went outside to smoke and when he came back in, the bartender was kicking people out because it was closing time.”
Gonzalez Benitez stated when he got outside he felt something hit him in the back, but he did
not fall down. Gonzalez Benitez stated he continued to walk away. He said the fight started over a video call Rivera was making. He claimed he had never seen the victim before.
Gonzalez Benitez “admitted that there were stab wounds, but his intention was to pull MLB
away.” He claimed Rivera had the knife.
Jail: Dane County Jail
Date of Offense: Aug. 19. 2023
Country of Origin:
ICE detainer: Issued 9/1/23
Criminal Complaint:
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Open in new tab ICE Detainers Plunge Under Biden-Harris
Illegal immigrants committing crimes is not a story that the corporate media and Vice President Kamala Harris want to tell, especially as border crossings have surged.
Under Biden/Harris, the number of U.S Border Patrol “encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico in December 2023” hit “the highest monthly total on record,” according to Pew Research Center.
The Biden administration issued just under 300,000 detainers from 2021 through the first quarter of 2024, a rising number, according to Trac Immigration, a project of Syracuse University. However, “overall 50 percent more ICE detainers were issued during the Trump presidency (FY 2017 – FY 2020),” Trac says.
Detainers “are critical for ICE to be able to identify and ultimately remove criminal aliens who are currently in federal, state or local custody,” ICE says. ICE detainers ask local law enforcement to hold a non-citizen inmate for 48 hours before release into the community so ICE can pick them up.
Inmates with detainers are only the people that ICE discovers and where ICE decides to act. Some jails, such as Dane County’s, don’t honor all ICE detainers and don’t give ICE 48 hours to pick up the inmates before release. At the other end of the spectrum stands a jail like Waukesha County, where the sheriff received federal immigration authority through a program called 287g.
ICE detainers “are often used as one indicator of the intensity of what is called ‘interior enforcement’ in contrast to ‘border enforcement,’ Trac writes.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “has long claimed that detainers, often called ‘immigration holds,’ are an essential tool needed to apprehend and deport individuals not authorized to remain in the U.S.,” the site says. “Detainers are supposed to be targeted at noncitizens who have committed crimes here in the U.S.”
In addition, the U.S. Border Patrol has arrested more than 15,000 criminal non-citizens in 2024 alone, including 27 murderers and 202 people for sexual offenses. But those are just the people they catch.
From 2006 to 2023, ICE placed detainers on more than 14,000 non-citizens living in Wisconsin, Trac says.
The first year of Biden-Harris saw the lowest numbers of ICE detainers issued since at least 2006. The Milwaukee and Dane County Jails had the most ICE detainers issued of any jurisdictions in Wisconsin during the time frame below, according to Trac.
The corporate media tend to focus on studies that show illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than non-citizens or they focus mostly on the other side of the coin – say, illegal immigrants whose labor helps keep dairy farms alive. The citizens who committed crimes had a right to be here; illegal immigrants did not. A tougher border policy might have prevented illegal immigrant crimes from occurring in the first place. The stories are worth telling.
“Although no federal law requires cooperation with ICE, many state and local laws, and sometimes court rulings, regulate compliance with ICE detainers,” The Immigrant Legal Resource Center says. Some states have made compliance mandatory, but Wisconsin is not one of them.
“Legally, the requirement of probable cause means ICE can only issue a detainer against (a) a noncitizen, who (b) is already ‘removable.’ A removable noncitizen is someone who can be put in removal proceedings for possible deportation,” the center says.
“ICE describes a detainer as a request to a ‘law enforcement agency to notify ICE before a removable individual is released from custody and to maintain custody of the noncitizen for a brief period so that ICE can take custody of that person,'” Trac says.
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