Once again, the sheriff in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, endangered the public and federal immigration agents when his jail refused to honor a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a move that required the agents to track down a dangerous illegal-alien felon.
On November 1, ICE agents collared a Mexican illegal convicted of a drunk-driving fatality who was released by the Mecklenburg sheriff’s office.
The county is one of the more notorious in the United States for its subversion of federal immigration law by refusing to cooperate with ICE.
It has released dozens of dangerous illegal aliens, among them burglars, stranglers, drunk drivers, and, of course, rapists and molesters.
The Mexican illegal whom ICE arrested last week is just the latest.
Sanctuary officials in North Carolina routinely ignore detainers, and did so more than once a day every day in fiscal 2019, the agency reported.
The Mexican
ICE reported that it collared Jose Barajas-Diaz on Friday, a week after the Mecklenburg sheriff’s office turned down an ICE detainer.
Cops arrested Barajas-Diaz on January 29 for drunk driving and killing another motorist. The next day, ICE lodged an immigration detainer that included an administrative warrant.
When Barajas-Diaz was convicted on October 24 and handed a five-year suspended sentenced, the sheriff’s office ignored the ICE detainer and released him, ICE reported.
That, of course, required ICE to hunt and catch Barajas-Diaz outside the secure facility where he should have been kept, which imperiled not only ICE agents but also the public given that the drunk-driving killer could well have obtained a weapon and resisted arrest.
Or, he could have jumped in a car and killed another unsuspecting motorist.
The sheriff, Garry McFadden, doesn’t much care who gets hurt.
In September, when ICE complained about his department’s subversion of federal immigraton law, McFadden told WCNC, the NBC affiliate, that he was “was elected with a clear mandate to stop honoring voluntary ICE detainers.”
Detainers, he has said, are mere requests with no force of law.
McFadden says he won’t hold an illegal alien unless ICE presents a warrant over a judge’s signature, the station reported.
How long that policy will last if one of the illegal-alien thugs he releases murders his family is anyone’s guess.
Dozens of Dangerous Criminals Released
This isn’t, of course, the first time ICE has tangled with the left-wing lawman.
In August, McFadden forced ICE to hunt down another illegal-alien suspect who had been charged with first-degree rape and two counts of indecent liberties with a child. ICE had filed a detainer the day after the illegal alien’s arrest, but again, McFadden’s department ignored it.
With its report on that suspect, ICE published a list of 22 illegal aliens that McFadden’s out-of-control department let go.
The department had loosed two of them upon the public twice; i.e., after two ICE detainers.
The list included a number of rape and assault suspects, as well as other illegals accused of drunk-driving and gun and drug crimes.
At the time, 16 of the 22 remained at large.
In its release on Barajas-Diaz, ICE reported that sanctuary localities in the Tarheel State rejected 500 detainers in fiscal 2019.
The convictions of those whom ICE sought included assault, buglary, homicide, sex crimes, and drunk driving.
Better News
As ICE swooped in on Barajas-Diaz, no thanks to the Mecklenburg sheriff, the agency deported an illegal-alien homicide suspect back to El Salvador.
On October 29, Moises De Jesus Ruiz-Mejia, 25, wanted for aggravated homicide, was sent back where he belongs.
ICE agents collared the suspect on May 1 after Interpol published a Red Notice about the suspect, the homicide, and his association with the 18th Street gang, Sureños 18.
The gangbanger jumped the border on October 12, the day before the Salvadoran government issued a warrant for his arrest, ICE reported.
A Red Notice is a global wanted poster that requests that cops help locate and arrest criminals who have fled from one country to another. The notice is published when a member country requests it.
Interpol has issued about 58,000 Red Notices, but only a little more than 7,000 are public.
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