121 murders attributed to illegals released by Obama administration
121 murders attributed to illegals released by Obama administration
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A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent escorts a handcuffed illegal immigrant convicted of a felony that was taken into custody during an early morning operation in Dallas on March 6. (Associated Press) more >
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times
Updated: 12:40 p.m. on Monday, June 15, 2015
More than 100 immigrants the Obama administration released back into the community went on to be charged with subsequent murders, according to government data released Monday that raises new questions about whether immigration authorities are doing enough to detail illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.
In one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted its agents didn’t find out about an illegal immigrant’s death threats and court injunctions against him until — which should have put him back in detention — until after the man was accused of a new murder.
That case, involving Apolinar Altamirano, is the latest instance of someone who’d been through the Obama administration deportation system but had been released, only to go on to commit major crimes.
ICE officials say they don’t regularly notify local authorities when they release someone, and don’t have a way of finding out from those authorities whether someone has gotten in trouble with the law again, so they didn’t know whether Mr. Altamirano’s $10,000 bond should have been revoked.
“ICE was not aware of the injunctions against Mr. Altamirano until after his January 22, 2015 arrest for first-degree murder, armed robbery and related offenses,” the agency said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican in whose state the murder occurred.
All told, 121 immigrants who were held but eventually released by ICE went on to commit “homicide-related offenses,” the agency said.
It said 33 of those were ordered by immigration courts and another 24 were released because of a 2001 Supreme Court decision capping the time an immigrant can be detained to six months. But a majority of the releases were completely discretionary, meaning ICE could have kept them in detention had it had the bed space and determination to do so.
In the case of Mr. Altamirano, he’d been put in deportation proceedings on Jan. 3, 2013, and was released after posting bond four days later. His first hearing before the immigration court wasn’t until April 9, 2014, and he was still awaiting a final deportation order in January this year when he was arrested for shooting a convenience store clerk in Mesa, Ariz.
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