Thread: Gang member at center of ICE controversy may have had help in recent crime, police sa

Gang member at center of ICE controversy may have had help in recent crime, police say

Erica Proffer, KVUE 7:26 PM. CDT July 20, 2017



AUSTIN - A known member of the "Surenos 13" gang, who Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims was released by the Travis County Jail without their knowledge, has a criminal history dating back more than a decade.

In 2006, Julio Cesar Mendoza-Caballero, 33, was arrested in Comal County for prostitution. He served 16 days in jail, then was released.

In 2007, he was arrested for felony theft of a firearm and unlawful carrying of a weapon. He served six months in jail and was released.

ICE told us on Tuesday, “Mendoza-Caballero was issued a final order of removal by a federal immigration judge Dec. 14, 2009. He was also convicted in federal court in Arizona for illegally entering the United States. On July 6, 2012, Mendoza-Caballero was also convicted of illegally re-entering the United States after having been deported. He has been previously removed four times; his most recent removal was in 2013.”

This latest arrest comes from an assault with injury charge. The alleged crime happened June 16, 2006. A warrant for arrest was issued January 31, 2017. The warrant was executed June 16, one year after the reported incident.

In the warrant for arrest, Austin Police say Julio Mendoza and his brother, Pedro, worked in construction.

The contractor listed in the affidavit, "Central Texas Drywall", told KVUE the brothers were subcontractors.

The victim, Delfino Vaca-Jaimez, told officers the brothers got angry due to an argument over the quality of work.

The warrant affidavit says Pedro tried to stab Vaca-Jaimez with a keyhole saw. It’s described as “a narrow pointed fine-tooth handsaw used especially for cutting curves of short radius.”

The affidavit says Julio started to hit Vaca-Jaimez after his brother threw the first punch.

An employee of Central Texas Drywall, Uriel Alvarado, defended the victim.

Alvarado told Vaca-Jimez to run as he grabbed the knife. Alvarado said in the document Vaca-Jimez was "really rattled by the hits so he was there, here and there, he wasn’t fully conscious, he was bleeding everywhere (sic)."

The court document says the brothers ran away before police arrived.

The KVUE Defenders could not find any record of arrest for Pedro.

Mendoza-Caballero is facing felony charges in U.S. District Court for illegally re-entering the United States after being deported, and is in the custody of U.S. Marshals. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

KVUE reached out to ICE about the subcontractor who is accused of hiring someone who was in the country illegally.

ICE's response is posted below:

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed an immigration detainer accompanied by a Warrant of Removal (Form I-205), with Travis County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) notifying the county of ICE’s intent to take into custody Julio Cesar Mendoza-Caballero, 33, from Mexico, a criminal alien gang member who had been deported four times previously. However, TCSO declined the detainer, despite being made aware of Mendoza-Caballero’s criminal history and gang ties. Upon declination of the detainer by TCSO, ICE asked TCSO to reconsider its decision to decline the detainer, again emphasizing Mendoza-Caballero’s criminal history and gang ties. However, despite ICE’s request, TCSO failed to notify ICE of Mendoza-Caballero’s impending release which would have afforded ICE the opportunity to detain and remove this dangerous criminal alien.TCSO ultimately released this criminal alien to the streets, thereby potentially compromising the safety of the community it has sworn to serve and protect. Providing proper release notification to ICE gives the agency a specific time and place that an individual will be released from law enforcement custody. This allows ICE time to allocate appropriate resources in a responsible fashion. That information was not conveyed to ICE when TCSO declined the detainer, thus denying us the opportunity to take custody of this dangerous gang member.Detainers are legally authorized requests, upon which a law enforcement agency may rely, to continue to maintain custody of an alien for up to 48 hours so that ICE may assume custody for removal purposes. Pursuant to ICE policy, all ICE detainers contain a completed probable cause statement and are submitted with an accompanying administrative arrest warrant or warrant of removal depending upon the circumstances of the individual case. In this case, ICE provided a Warrant of Removal with the detainer.Depending on the alien’s criminal history, an alien who illegally reenters the United States, after having been previously removed, has committed a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison.ICE’s overall concern is for the safety and welfare of this nation’s citizens. ICE operations improve public safety by removing criminal aliens from the streets, and from the country.”

http://www.kvue.com/news/local/gang-...-say/458374580

July 19, 2017
By Don Morgan

Mexican Gang Member has been arrested a month after he was released from the Travis County Jail.

Back on June 16th ICE agents filed a detainer request for 33 year old Julio Cesar Mendoza-Caballero and on the very same day, the documented gang member was released from jail.

Travis County Jail officials didn’t tell ICE about the release.

The man was brought back into custody on Friday. He had been deported 4 times in the past.

Mendoza-Caballero has a long list of charges here in the states with his most recent arrest coming in June. He was brought in for violating a city ordinance and causing bodily injury.

The jail says an ICE detainer was filed at that time. He’s currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshal.

http://www.ktsa.com/ice-travis-count...bers-detainer/

July 19, 2017
By Mark Wilson

Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez is disputing the details given by federal immigration officials who touted the arrest of a known Mexican gang member and four-time deportee and their claim that he was released from the Travis County Jail in June despite a request to detain him.
Julio Cesar Mendoza-Caballero, 33, had been booked into the jail June 16 on a misdemeanor assault charge and a city ordinance violation, according to jail authorities. The same day, Mendoza-Caballero walked free on a personal recognizance bond, and remained free until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him at an Austin home on July 14.

ICE on Tuesday had said in a statement that the sheriff’s office had released Mendoza-Caballero, a “documented ‘Sureños 13’ Mexican gang member,” without notifying them, even though a request to keep him in jail, called a detainer, had been filed to keep him in custody.

Within hours, though, the sheriff’s office issued a statement of its own, explaining that ICE was notified of Mendoza-Caballero’s release, and no court orders or warrants were filed to provide probable cause to keep him jailed.

“In actuality, ICE was notified of the declined detainer request June 16, 2017, at 2:41 p.m.,” the sheriff’s office said. “The Austin branch of ICE was also notified via its official email address.”

Mendoza walked out of the facility at 8:52 p.m., according to the sheriff’s office.


Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez speaks at a Wednesday news conference at the sheriff's office about the release of Julio Cesar

The American-Statesman requested copies of emails between the two agencies regarding Mendoza-Caballero, but didn’t receive them by press time.

Hernandez said ICE had every opportunity to produce documentation to hold Mendoza-Caballero, but didn’t.

“The charge, which was a Class A misdemeanor and then a Class C ordinance charge, doesn’t fall in our threshold, and so we declined the detainer, and the subject made bond,” Hernandez said. “They had six hours before he was released, and during that six hours they could have produced a removal order or a warrant and they did neither.”

ICE said that “pursuant to ICE policy, all ICE detainers are submitted with an accompanying administrative arrest warrant or warrant of removal depending upon the circumstance of the individual case.”

Hernandez, however, said an administrative warrant isn’t enough.

“It’s not signed by a magistrate, so it holds the same power as a detainer,” Hernandez said.

She said sheriff’s deputies have worked closely with ICE on a number of occasions, reconsidered detainer requests and honored removal orders and warrants, so she was a little surprised by Tuesday’s statement from ICE.

“I believe that immigration overreacted, and I believe that it may have been a little politically based,” she said, adding that she still believes her policy makes Travis County safer.

Hernandez placed herself smack in the middle of an intense debate about so-called sanctuary cities earlier this year when she announced she wouldn’t cooperate with all federal immigration detainers filed at the jail. Hernandez’s policy on detainers said she would only comply with the requests under certain circumstances related to a handful of serious charges.

The policy, which earned her the moniker “Sanctuary Sally” among county Republicans, was rendered illegal with the passage of Senate Bill 4, Texas’ so-called sanctuary cities ban, slated to go into effect Sept. 1. The law punishes police chiefs and sheriffs who discourage their rank and file from asking detainees about their immigration status.

ICE said Mendoza-Caballero was convicted of stealing a firearm in Hopkins County in 2008 and of illegally entering the United States in Arizona. He had been removed from the country four times before, with the latest removal in 2013. Texas Department of Public Safety records show he was also convicted of misdemeanor prostitution in Travis County in 2009.

“(ICE) talked in their press release about how this person was deported four times. So, he’s now in their custody, probably deported the fifth time. Does that make our community safer? I say no,” Hernandez said.

ICE issued another statement Wednesday to clarify the action the agency took before Mendoza-Caballero’s release. It said it placed an immigration detainer accompanied by a warrant of removal and notified the sheriff’s office of the federal agency’s intent to take Mendoza-Caballero into custody.

“However, TCSO declined the detainer, despite being made aware of Mendoza-Caballero’s criminal history and gang ties,” the agency said. “Upon declination of the detainer by TCSO, ICE asked TCSO to reconsider its decision to decline the detainer, again emphasizing Mendoza-Caballero’s criminal history and gang ties.”

Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Kristen Dark said authorities at the jail received an administrative warrant from ICE, but not an order of removal, and that the sheriff’s office has no record of any communication from ICE urging the sheriff’s office to reconsider.

Republicans immediately seized on the news of Mendoza-Caballero’s release to illustrate how Hernandez’s policy puts area residents at risk.

“‘Sanctuary Sally’ recklessly went forward with her Sanctuary policy in January, against the recommendation of her predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, and the Texas Legislature,” said Matt Mackowiak, Travis County GOP chairman. “Now she is purposefully endangering the public by releasing known gang members with criminal convictions and multiple previous deportations back into our county. Does an innocent Travis County resident have to die for Sheriff Hernandez to wake up?”

Gov. Greg Abbott also took issue with the policy and made SB 4 a priority for the Legislature.

In January, federal officials told two magistrate judges they would target Austin in a major immigration operation dubbed “Operation Cross Check” that was, in part, retribution for Hernandez’s policy on detainers. The February operation resulted in the arrest of 51 people.

Activists promptly mobilized across the city, staging marches and protests to protect undocumented immigrants from arrest, while Austin police and city leaders complained that they were being left in the dark as ICE remained largely silent while raids went on.

Supporters of the action praised the tactic, saying it was keeping undocumented criminals off the streets and improving community safety.

Of the 51 people arrested during the operation, 23 were previously identified by ICE as having criminal convictions, but 28 were deemed “non-criminals” by the immigration agency — meaning those people didn’t have previous criminal convictions but were suspected of being in the country illegally.

Of the 23 who had been convicted of previous crimes, nine were convicted of drunken driving, two for assault and two for sexual offenses involving children. Several of the individuals had been convicted of marijuana possession, obstructing the police and drug trafficking.

“It is unfortunate that once again, ICE has presented inaccurate information in what appears to be an effort to publicly shame agencies with which it disagrees,” the sheriff’s office said. “Open communication between the Travis County Jail and ICE is a daily, if not hourly occurrence. A simple phone call or email would have clarified their error privately and professionally.”

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/loca...PZP2at4HrbTXK/