U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reported three more examples of state and local sanctuary officials ignoring agency detainers and instead releasing illegal-alien criminals into unsuspecting communities, the result in one case in New York being a vehicular homicide.
That case means sanctuary officials are directly responsible for that unnecessary death.
New York City released an attempted murder suspect, while the third case involves Montgomery County, Maryland, a major sanctuary and center of illegal-alien anarchy just outside the nation’s capital.
Unsurprisingly, that individual is a sex-crime suspect.
New York Killing
The worst of the three occurred in Cayuga County in upstate New York.
On Tuesday, the agency reported, ICE filed a detainer for the county sheriff to hold Heriberto Perez-Velasquez, a Guatemalan illegal under arrest for his role, police allege, in a drunk-driving death.
ICE filed the detainer after the sheriff arrested the illegal alien on Sunday for vehicular manslaughter, drunk driving, and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident.
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But Perez-Velasquez shouldn’t have been able to drive drunk in the first place, because he should have been in jail for a previous drunk-driving arrest just three weeks earlier.
The Border Patrol bagged him the first time on May 11, 2007, and federal authorities deported him. But like so many illegals, the Central American didn’t get the message. He jumped the border again, date unknown, ICE reported.
New York State Police collared the Guatemalan on October 18 for drunk driving, resisting arrest, and “other charges.”
Of course, state cops didn’t notify ICE and they let him go.
That permitted him to get behind the wheel three weeks later and, cops allege, kill someone.
“Had Mr. Perez-Velasquez been detained by ICE after his October 2019, DUI arrest, a life might have been spared,” Acting ICE Director Matt Albence rightly said. “Sanctuary jurisdictions that do not honor detainers or allow us access to jails and prisons are shielding criminal aliens from immigration enforcement and jeopardizing the lives of law-abiding citizens.”
ICE noted that New York won’t honor a detainer to hold an illegal without a warrant from a judge. Problem is, ICE reported, “ICE detainers, removal orders issued by federal immigration judges, and ICE immigration enforcement in general, is conducted under civil law. The ‘judicial warrant’ demand only applies to criminal cases and does not exist for civil law matters.”
Attempted Murder Suspect
New York is also partial to releasing attempted murder suspects in defiance of detainers.
On October 16, agents collared Irvin Acaphelsu Cespedes, a 41-year-old Jamaican whom cops in New York released thrice between April and October 2019 despite three detainers.
Cespedes appears more dangerous than the drunk Guatemalan, but apparently hasn’t murdered anyone.
New York City cops arrested him on April 18 and charged him with multiple counts of marijuana possession, ICE reported. The agency lodged a detainer the next day, but the cops let him go.
NYPD collared him again on July 7 on charges of attempted murder. Same day, ICE lodged another detainer, but police released him again.
They collared him a third time on October 12, again for possessing marijauna. ICE filed a third detainer, but city cops freed him yet again.
ICE finally apprehended the Jamaican miscreant in the Bronx on October 16.
Last year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called ICE agents “a bunch of thugs.” He is not, one might surmise, as voluble in expressing his opinion about deadly illegal-alien drunk drivers and attempted murder suspects.
Another One in Montgomery County
The third case involves another notorious sanctuary, Montgomery County, Maryland.
ICE arrested Luis Fredy Hernandez Morelas, 48, on November 8 in Springfield, Virginia, two days after cops in Montgomery County released him. They had charged the Guatemalan illegal with sexually abusing a child on Nov 5.
ICE filed a detainer the same day, but the county ignored it and released him on November 6. County officials assumed, apparently, that the county’s children would be safe if they freed the border jumper.
Montgomery County’s rebellion against federal immigration authorities gave the county a black eye over the summer when WJLA reporter Kevin Lewis began reporting about the many illegal-alien sex fiends the county had arrested.
On November 5, the same day county cops arrested the border-jumping sex-crime suspect, The New American reported that Montgomery had partially reversed its dangerous sanctuary policy and was helping ICE on some cases.
This, apparently, was not one of them.
Image: mbbirdy via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
