An illegal-alien manslaughter suspect was on the loose in New York until recently thanks to yet another sanctuary county that ignored a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold him.
Same story, different day. The cops arrested the illegal and charged him with killing someone. But an illegal-alien protection law forced the jail to let him go after the feds put in a request to hold him.
Meanwhile, ICE mounted an operation in Virginia that netted multiple illegal-alien thugs, proving once again that illegal immigration is out of control.
Detainer Ignored
On November 26, ICE collared Mexican illegal Feliciano Perez-Bautista, 32, who isn’t, as his name might suggest, a renowned classical guitarist or famous impressionist painter.
He’s just another illegal alien charged, again, in a killing.
ICE reported that cops in the Yonkers Police Department arrested him on July 8 and charged him with gang assault. But the victim died, which invited the manslaughter charge.
Four days later, officers with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations sent a detainer to Yonkers police, and then another on July 30 to the Westchester County Department of Corrections. “Neither detainer was honored,” the agency reported, “and Perez-Bautista was later released, without notification to ICE.”
The jail released him pursuant to the county’s “immigrant protection act.”
Perez-Bautista was deported twice within 16 months, in May 2013 and September 2014.
Sanctuaries Everywhere
ICE did not report how long Perez-Bautista was at large, but his case is nothing unusual. Sanctuaries release rape and homicide suspects regularly.
As The New American reported on Monday, ICE recently collared an illegal-alien sex fiend from Guatemala that sanctuary Philadelphia released twice, after two arrests and two detainers, despite more than a dozen charges related to the rape of a child.
The agency has also released a threat list of illegal-alien thugs and the sanctuary counties that might release them. A particularly notorious sanctuary on that count is North Carolina’s Mecklenburg, which has loosed dozens of dangerous illegal-alien thugs upon the unsuspecting public.
“When law enforcement agencies decide to not honor ICE detainers and release violent criminals back onto the streets, they are putting their city at serious risk,” New York ICE chief Thomas Decker said after the Perez-Bautista bust. “We want nothing more than to cooperate and work together with local law enforcement authorities…. Unfortunately, more and more we are seeing politicians place their own political agenda above the safety of the citizens in which they serve.”
Leftist officials who passed sanctuary laws are mistaken if they think those laws will deter the agency’s enforcement activities.
“Any local jurisdiction thinking that refusing to cooperate with ICE will result in a decrease in local immigration enforcement is mistaken,” the agency noted, because “the agency has no choice but to conduct more at-large arrest operations.”
That, in turn, means ICE will encounter other illegals it would normally not encounter.
How bad is the sanctuary problem in New York? In August, the New York Daily News reported that New York City’s cops rejected every one of the 2,916 detainers from ICE from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019.
Illegals Nabbed in Eight-day Operation
Meanwhile, ICE reported, in Virginia between November 12 and November 20, ERO officers nailed 23 thugs on “on criminal and civil violations … including those with convictions for indecent exposure, making felony threats to damage buildings or transportation, assault and battery, identity theft and driving under the influence.”
Operation Eagle Shield, the agency reported, netted a number of illegals, including a Salvadoran with an assault and battery conviction, and a previously deported Honduran with misdemeanor convictions and a “felony conviction for making threats to bomb or damage buildings or means of transportation.”
ICE also nailed a Honduran with five drunk-driving convictions and an assault-and-battery conviction.
ERO apprehended the 23 thugs — men from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico — in seven places. The largest haul, 13, was in Richmond. ERO caught others in Chester and Petersburg, and Henrico, Hanover, and Chesterfield counties.
ICE did not report how many of those caught were sanctuary beneficiaries.
The Center for Immigration Studies lists Fairfax, Arlington, and Chesterfield counties as sanctuaries.
Image: stocknroll via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
