How Many More? Illegal With Drunk Driving Record Faces Vehicular Homicide Charges In Wisconsin
Steven Michael Nasholm passed away “unexpectedly” on Jan. 30, according to his obituary.
The 35-year-old husband, father, and trucking company owner was killed in a late January crash in northern Wisconsin’s Rusk County. Nasholm’s killer, according to police, was Jorge Sanchez-Tzanahua, a 22-year-drunk driver who was in the country illegally and had no business behind the wheel of a vehicle.
The fatality is another in a growing list of “unexpected” deaths allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant in President Joe Biden’s borderless America.
Crossing a Line
Sanchez-Tzanahua currently faces multiple charges, including “homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle.” He has been accused of drunk driving while having a prior OWI conviction on his record. Sanchez-Tzanahua’s license had been revoked at the time of the Jan. 30 fatal crash in the town of Strickland, according to the criminal complaint.
The accused is being held in the Rusk County Jail on a $100,000 bond. A special prosecutor has been appointed to the case.
According to the complaint, Sanchez-Tzanahua was operating a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee in the early morning hours of Jan. 30 when the vehicle collided with Nasholm’s semi. The jeep was located about 100 yards west of the semi when law enforcement arrived on the scene.
“[A]ll evidence of the point of impact indicated the jeep had crossed the center line into the east bound lane causing the collision with the semi,” Rusk County Deputy Bryce Baier wrote in the crash report.
Sanchez-Tzanahua suffered minor injuries in the collision; Nasholm, who was found unconscious and critically injured in the cab, died on his way to the hospital, court documents state.
The deputy reported that Sanchez-Tzanahua’s eyes were “bloodshot and glossy and the Defendant’s face and eyelids appeared droopy.” There was a “strong order of intoxicants” around the man and in his vehicle. His blood alcohol level was recorded at 0.176, twice the legal limit, according to the complaint.
‘So Unnecessary’
A check of his criminal record shows Sanchez-Tzanahua’s license had been revoked following an Operating While Intoxicated conviction less than a year before January’s fatal crash. That arrest occurred in Barron County, just west of Rusk County. He was also required to have an Ignition Interlock Device installed, a condition that Sanchez-Tzanahua violated, according to the complaint.
“The Defendant admitted he was not legally in the United States and that he has been in the U.S. for approximately three years,” court documents state. “The Defendant told the deputies that the information on the two ID’s he provided containing his name and date of birth was correct.”
The Rusk County District Attorney’s office directed questions to the special prosecutor, who did not return The Federalist’s request for comment. The Barron County DA’s office also did not return a comment request.
“This was so unnecessary,” said state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a southeast Wisconsin Republican who has been seeking answers from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for months.
It may be hard for law-abiding citizens to fathom why an illegal immigrant convicted of an OWI was allowed to remain in the country, let alone be ordered to install an interlock device on his vehicle despite license revocation. But in September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that immigration officers would no longer jail and deport individuals based on their undocumented status. So, illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes often need not worry about being sent back to their country of origin.
Senate Republicans recently introduced the Protect Our Communities From DUIs Act, a bill that would prevent illegal immigrants who have been found guilty of driving under the influence from entering the United States and automatically deport those who commit DUIs within the U.S.
Biden has threatened to fire Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents who deport illegal immigrants who have committed lesser crimes than felonies because agents should “only arrest for the purpose of dealing with a felony that’s committed,” and Biden does “not count drunk driving as a felony,” U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) noted in a recent press release.
Drive to License Illegals
An official from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation told Brandtjen’s office this week that “Wisconsin never issued this person a license.”
“If he previously held a license, it must have been issued by a different state,” the DOT official said.
It “must have been” because illegal immigrants are not supposed to be able to get a driver’s license in Wisconsin, one of 31 states that do not offer driving privileges to unauthorized immigrants, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Wisconsin Democrat Gov. Tony Evers has “championed the restoration of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants,” pushing the Badger State to join the 19 states — including California, Illinois, and New York — and the District of Columbia to allow licenses for illegal immigrants.
In 2006, Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle “reluctantly” signed Wisconsin’s RealID law, mandating that only legal citizens and those who have legally entered the U.S. may obtain a driver’s license. When the law went into effect on April 1, 2007, Wisconsin was one of 10 states offering licenses to illegals.
Evers has been backed in his crusade to license illegal aliens by fellow Democrats and far-left organizations such as Voces de la Frontera. The governor has repeatedly included in his budget proposals a provision that would permit IDs and driver’s licenses for illegals, but the “gerrymandered, Republican-led State Legislature has blocked” the leftist’s efforts, or so insists Voces.
But some Republicans are changing their tune as the Badger State, like just about everywhere else, faces a worker shortage — particularly down on the farm. State Rep. Patrick Snyder, a Wausau-area Republican, told left-leaning investigative journalism organization ProPublica in August that some of his Republican voters and colleagues think that people who come to the U.S. illegally shouldn’t be rewarded.
“I understand their concerns. But in the same sense, if we suddenly kicked out all of the people here, the undocumented, our dairy farms would collapse. We have to come up with a solution,” Snyder said in the Propublica story, published by state and national media outlets.
Proponents of licensing illegal immigrants insist doing so will make the roads safer because they will supposedly receive proper training.
Milwaukee County passed a resolution last year urging the state to adopt laws legalizing driver’s licenses for illegals. The resolution “emphasizes Milwaukee County’s commitment to inclusivity and acknowledges the many challenges undocumented immigrants face, such as the inability to purchase homes, apply for loans, or seek employment due to a lack of proper legal identification,” Milwaukee County Supervisor Juan Miguel Martinez wrote in a press release.
Leftist groups have worked a full-court press for the passage of bills that would reverse the ban. They’ve partnered with their friends in the accomplice media, which have dutifully driven a narrative of woe for the illegal immigrants who need to travel to work and live but face potentially severe consequences if they do.
“But the state makes it almost impossible for workers to have lives outside the farm without breaking the law. In Wisconsin, undocumented immigrants can own and register their cars and trucks, but they aren’t allowed to drive them. Those who drive anyway are pulled over again and again and again, and issued tickets that eat away at their wages,” ProPublica wrote in another piece on agriculture’s dependence on the undocumented worker.
Say Their Names
Lost in the ProPublica narrative is this question: Why are illegal immigrants “pulled over again and again”? Also lost in the story of people whose first act upon entering the country is to break the law are the people lost in senseless tragedies that could have — should have — been prevented.
What about Steven Michael Nasholm?
What about Craig Schimming? The 52-year-old former Special Olympian was killed in a New Year’s morning crash in 2023 as he and his elderly parents were on their way to church. Illegal immigrant Juan Felix-Avendano was drunk and high on meth when his Volkswagen Jetta slammed into a Toyota RAV4 driven by Schimming’s father, George, according to the complaint. Felix-Avendano was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash, which seriously injured the elderly couple.
The 22-year-old illegal was sentenced in January to 22 years in prison, with another eight years of extended supervision, according to Fox 6.
Conservative news outlet Wisconsin Right Now obtained Felix-Avendano’s arrest detention report from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department at the time. It noted that the killer is from Mexico and that “he is not a U.S. citizen.”
“However, because of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department’s policies on ICE and illegal immigrants, there is no immigration hold on Felix-Avendano, the Sheriff’s Department told us,” the publication reported. As WRN noted, Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission has had a sanctuary policy on the books since 2019, requiring police to secure a federal warrant by a federal judge before they may assist federal agents in immigration enforcement.
Interestingly, Felix-Avendano’s noncitizen status escaped scrutiny from corporate media, which failed to mention it, only describing him as an “unlicensed driver.”
WRN at the time reported that the crash was the second fatal drunk driving incident involving an illegal immigrant.
“In mid-December, in another horrific OWI-related crash, Ernest Regalado Rodriguez was charged in the drunk driving crash that killed 20-year-old nurse Johanna Pascoe in Caledonia, Wisconsin,” the publication reported.
Nationally, Biden’s border debacle, which has inundated the nation with illegal immigrants, is squarely on the minds of voters. A recent Gallup poll found the Biden administration’s border invasion is the leading concern of Americans. The brutal murder of Georgia college student Laken Riley, allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, has only thrown a hotter spotlight on the crisis.
As leftists and their immigration allies among Republicans seek to extend benefits and privileges for illegal immigrants, families across Wisconsin and the country are being forced to live with “unexpected” deaths.
“Steve was a loving father and husband who was quick-witted and never refrained from sharing jokes (with a disregard for appropriateness!). He loved tractors, bear hunting with his hounds, driving semis and motorcycles, and fixing lawnmowers and ATVs. Regardless of his claimed distaste for horses, he loved supporting his girls’ love for Cami and Captain,” reads the obituary of Steven Michael Nasholm.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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