Unpaid leave for ICE agent

By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News, January 21, 2008

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of providing off-limits information to Republican Bob Beauprez's gubernatorial campaign will be put on unpaid leave effective Wednesday, a spokesman for the agent's legal defense fund said today.

Cory Voorhis, 39, has been on paid leave since he was charged in federal court in October with unauthorized access to government computers.

Voorhis received a letter Friday from the special agent in charge of the Denver field office, said Michael Riebau, a former Department of Homeland Security agent and spokesman for Cory Legal Defense.

Unpaid status means Voorhis will no longer have government contributions to his retirement or health insurance plans, Riebau said. He also cannot visit the ICE office or testify in court on cases he investigated.

Riebau called the decision "arbitrary and capricious" and said ICE should have waited for the criminal case to work its way through the courts before penalizing Voorhis.

"This good, honorable and noble agent has just been thrown under the bus by everybody," Riebau added....

Federal prosecutors say Voorhis used the National Crime Information Center database to look up criminal histories of illegal immigrants who received plea deals from Bill Ritter when he was the Denver district attorney.

Beauprez's campaign then used the information — which is to be accessed for law enforcement purposes only — in attack ads against Ritter, the Democrat who defeated Beauprez in the 2006 race, prosecutors allege.

Voorhis is a father of two who served in the Army before joining the border patrol 15 years ago.

He testified during a hearing last week that he had three disciplinary actions on his record prior to the investigation into whether he illegally accessed NCIC.

When he worked with the border patrol, he received a written reprimand for losing a pair of binoculars. He later was required to get counseling for a verbal confrontation with another agent.

Most recently, he was punished because he didn't tell ICE officials that he had received a summons for assault and pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, he said.

The federal case is scheduled to go to trial Feb. 4.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Kane will consider a motion by the Denver District Attorney's office to quash subpoenas for email and telephone records.

Voorhis' attorneys requested the information as part of a motion to dismiss the case because of selective prosecution. They say employees in the district attorney's office also accessed the information for a non-law enforcement purpose but were not prosecuted for it....

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