Thanks to the idiotic policy of catching and releasing illegal aliens, and the even more idiotic sanctuary policies that protect those criminals from deportation, once again someone is dead.
This time, the victim is a 14-year-old girl, Ariana Funes-Diaz, murdered in Maryland with a bat and machete.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer for the two suspects a year ago after a robbery attempt. But jail authorities in Prince George’s County ignored it and released them.
Despite those facts, Maryland’s officials remain defiant. Yeah, we released them, one said, and we’ll continue to do so.
Message: If someone must die, so be it.
The Murder
The suspects are Josue Fuentes-Ponce, 16, and Joel Escobar, 17, both Salvadoran illegals.
On Tuesday, ICE reported that Fuentes-Ponce crossed the border illegally in Texas three years ago “as part of a family unit.” As with the thousands of illegals crossing the border now, “they were ultimately paroled into the U.S. pending the outcome of the immigration case. On March 16, 2017, an immigration judge ordered Fuentes removed in absentia, yet he remained.”
Border agents collared Escobar near McAllen Texas, sent him to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which in turn “released [him] to a family member in the Washington, D.C. area.”
But lo and behold, having “fled violence” and “poverty,” the “migrants” and “refugees” weren’t much interested in signing up for the jobs Americans won’t do.
Before last month’s murder, reported ICE:
Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Ernesto Escobar, both Salvadoran nationals … were previously arrested on May 11, 2018 when they were arrested by Prince George’s County Police Department (PGCPD) for attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, participation in gang activity, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted robbery, and other related charges. ICE officers lodged a detainer with PGCDC, however both were released on an unknown date and time without notification to ICE.
The Washington Post offered a little more detail. Court records, the newspaper reported, showed that murder suspect Escobar robbed two people at a gas station on May 10 last year:
Escobar and another member of the group “then displayed gang signs with their hands and stated that they were MS-13 members and that the victims needed to give them money for being in their territory or they were going to get hurt,” according to charging documents. When the victims refused, one member of the group attacked them with a machete as Escobar allegedly attempted to keep one victim from getting up, the charging documents show….
Escobar was charged as an adult, but “because Fuentes-Ponce’s case went through the juvenile system, it cannot be determined what the outcome was after his arrest and whether he was found to have had a role in the alleged crimes,” the newspaper reported.
Escobar pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery, the Post reported, and landed a 308-day sentence with credit for time served.
But the run-in with law enforcement did not, apparently, dissuade them from a life of crime.
“Prosecutors contend Funes-Diaz was taken on April 18 to a tunnel under an overpass by a creek,” the Post reported, “where Escobar attacked her with a wooden bat and Fuentes-Ponce with a machete, while another person — who is being sought — captured the killing on a camera phone, according to charging documents.”
Maryland Unfazed
“There was no reason for this girl to die,” ICE spokeswoman Justine M. Whelan told the Post. “It’s hard to imagine that anyone would not be interested in ensuring that people like this are not on the streets, doing bad things, after demonstratively violent behavior.”
Officials in Maryland are unmoved. They don’t much care how many die at the hands of illegal aliens.
They offered two explanations for releasing the two criminals instead of notifying ICE or honoring the detainer. Honoring the detainer “would have violated state guidelines,” they told the Post, but anyway, the “juvenile detention facility that had held Fuentes-Ponce in 2018 said it had not directly received a request from ICE to detain him at the time he was due to be released.” Prince George’s County is an illegal-alien sanctuary.
The hard line statement from Mary Lou McDonough, boss of the county’s jails, showed that it wouldn’t have mattered if ICE agents hand delivered the detainer to the jail on a silver salver. “If they really want us to hold somebody,” she huffed to the Post, “they should get a [criminal] warrant. ICE is well aware of how we handle cases in Prince George’s County. We will never hold anybody for ICE, which is what they want you to do with a detainer.”
ICE reported on Tuesday that it “again lodged detainers with PGCDC and will again seek to take custody of these public safety threats pending the outcome of their criminal proceedings.”
Image: mbbirdy via iStock / Getty Images Plus
