S.F. Mass Murder Suspect Avoided Deportation Back In 2006


Cue FOX News talking-head outrage: Binh Thai Luc, 35, the man alleged to have committed Friday's particularly brutal mass murder in San Francisco's Ingelside District, had been ordered for deportation back to Vietnam in 2002. The estimable Jason Dearen of Associated Press reports:

An immigration judge in 2006 had ordered the suspect in the recent slayings of five people in San Francisco to be removed from the country, officials said Monday.However, he remained in the U.S. after the Vietnamese government declined to provide necessary documents.
Dearen goes on to note:

Gillian Christensen, ICE's deputy press secretary, said that under U.S. law Luc could not be held for more than 180 days while the government sought his removal, so he was released from ICE custody in 2006.

Christensen said ICE makes every possible effort to remove all final-order aliens within a reasonable period, which the Supreme Court has determined is 180 days. After that period, if the actual removal cannot occur within the reasonably foreseeable future, ICE must release them.


"He continued to report to the ICE office in San Francisco as required after his release from ICE custody, and had no other incidents or arrests during that period," Christensen said.
Binh spent almost a decade in the clink for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, convicted in 1998 for the armed robbery of a San Jose Chinese restaurant in 1996. "He was in prison from 1998 to 2006, then served two years of parole."


Binh stands accused of married couple Hua Shun Lei, 65, and Wan Yi Xi, their children Vincent Lei, 32, and Ying Xue Lei, 37, and friend of the family Chia Huei Chu, 30.

S.F. Mass Murder Suspect Avoided Deportation Back In 2006: SFist