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Two illegal aliens, one scheduled for deportation and another previously deported, raped an 11-year-old girl multiple times in Montgomery County, Maryland, county authorities allege.
The leftist county just outside Washington, D.C., declared itself an illegal-alien sanctuary last month, which raises the question of whether it will turn the illegals over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they are convicted and after they serve their sentences — or even if they aren’t convicted.
Reports did not disclose how the two rape suspects came to live in Maryland, which doesn’t much matter to the girl they raped. Had the one been deported, and the other caught, she wouldn’t have been raped.
The Suspects
The suspects are Mauricio Barrera-Navidad, 29, who lives in Damascus, and Carlos Palacios-Amaya, 28, who lives in Gaithersburg, Washington, D.C.’s WJLA reported.
Each faces a charge of second-degree rape. In this case, that charge means the perpetrator forced vaginal intercourse on a victim under 14 and was at least four years older.
Last week, the victim — now 12-years-old — spoke with a social worker at her middle school in Germantown. Talking through tears, the girl shared the painful details about what both men allegedly did to her.
In September 2018, the victim was introduced to her older brother’s friend, Palacios-Amaya. Over the course of the next few months, the then 27-year-old man raped the middle schooler on multiple occasions, authorities allege. The victim recalled one instance where Palacios-Amaya “used his cell phone to video record the two of them having sex,” police noted in court documents.
The victim told the social worker that Palacios-Amaya would often pressure her not to attend school so that she could stay home while her parents were at work. That gave Palacios-Amaya unsupervised access to the girl.
Cops found photos of Palacios-Amaya with the girl on her cellphone.
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The other suspect’s access to the victim came through a seemingly innocent event: her older brother’s birthday party. That took place at a trailer park in Germantown, the station reported: “At one point in the evening, Barrera-Navidad and the 11-year-old victim entered a bedroom. According to police, Barrera-Navidad raped the girl and then continued to communicate with her via cell phone for an undisclosed period of time thereafter.”
As for their immigration status, the station’s report offered no surprises: Both are illegal aliens.
Barrera-Navidad received a final deportation order almost three years ago, but “it’s unclear why the Salvadoran national remained in the country,” the station reported.
Immigration authorities deported Palacios-Amaya in 2014 “for an undisclosed reason,” an odd locution given that all illegals, technically, are subject to deportation for no other reason that their illegal presence.
ICE, the station reported, called him a “repeat immigration violator” and didn’t know when he jumped the border to return.
The station did not identify his home country.
Sanctuary County
One question about the rapes is whether they’ll have any effect on the decision by Marc Elrich, Montgomery County’s leftist executive, to declare the county a sanctuary.
On July 22, the Washington Post reported, he “signed the Promoting Community Trust Executive Order, prohibiting all executive-branch departments from, among other things, using local government resources to assist federal agents in civil immigration investigations…. That means they cannot allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into nonpublic spaces in government buildings or give them access to individuals in county government custody — unless they are in possession of a court order or criminal warrant.”
Police have refused to cooperate with ICE since 2014, the Post reported, but Elrich’s edict means the county is even more serious about protecting illegal-alien criminals from deportation. He will punish those who obey federal immigration law and report illegals to ICE.
“Now, we’ve laid it out in an Executive Order, so it has the force of law,” he told the Post, “adding that employees who violate the order will receive disciplinary action.”
“It’s not just symbolic that I did this,” Elrich continued. “This legally codifies what I said I was going to do, and residents can have this assurance.”
In some sense, Elrich is merely responding to his constituents, many of whom aren’t native Marylanders: 30 percent of the county’s population of one million, the Post reported, are immigrants.
Another county outside D.C., Prince George’s, also stopped honoring detainers in 2014. Pursuant to that policy, as The New American reported in May, the county jail released two illegals who then murdered a girl with a machete. County officials said their policy would not change.
But at least Americans will have an easier time keeping track of illegal-alien criminals assisted by sanctuary officials such as Elrich. President Trump issued an executive order that requires ICE to publish a quarterly report on the crimes illegal aliens commit after localities such as Montgomery and Prince George’s release them from custody after refusing to notify or cooperate with the federal agency.
Image: P_Wei via iStock / Getty Images Plus
