Thread: Immigration detainer issued for Elizabeth murder suspect

By Marisa Iati | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com on April 22, 2016 at 8:07 AM, updated April 22, 2016 at 8:11 AM

ELIZABETH — Federal immigration authorities have filed a detainer for a city man accused of a fatal stabbing and kidnapping earlier this month.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked local authorities to alert them before releasing Salomon Rosendo Gomez-Serpas from custody so ICE can take over, an ICE spokesman said.

Gomez-Serpas, a native of El Salvador, was charged with alien inadmissibility and deported in 2012, Union County Assistant Prosecutor Alan Silver said in court last week. ICE spokesman Alvin Phillips confirmed Gomez-Serpas later returned to the United States illegally.

The 23-year-old defendant has been charged with murder, first-degree kidnapping and a second-degree weapons offense in the April 9 death of Elizabeth resident Mario Ortiz outside the Imperial Latino Lounge on New Point Road.

Federal authorities deported Gomez-Serpas, 23, in June 2012 after they apprehended him in Arizona, Silver said in court last week.

Gomez-Serpas was sent to El Salvador, with a stopover in Guatemala, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said. Further details about the deportation were not available.

Immigration policy has been one of the most contentious topics of the 2016 presidential campaigns, and the U.S. Supreme Court this week heard a challenge to President Barack Obama's plan to give work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.

About 11.3 million immigrants were living in the United States without authorization as of March 2013, according to Pew Research Center.

Crossing the border has become increasingly difficult in recent years, so fewer deported immigrants return to the United States than once did so, said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers.

Still, she said, some people who have been deported return due to strong family ties in the United States, fear of violence in their home countries or lack of economic opportunity. Specifics of Gomez-Serpas' situation were unclear.

Lori Nessel, an immigration law professor at Seton Hall University, said Gomez-Serpas will be deported again if he is convicted of homicide, an "aggravated felony" under federal immigration law.

"As an aggravated felon, he would be barred forever from entering the United States," Nessel said.

Despite the accusations against Gomez-Serpas, Nessel cautioned against creating a false link between immigration status and crime. In fact, she said, native-born Americans are more likely than immigrants to commit crime.

The American Immigration Council estimates that about 1.6 percent of immigrant men between ages 18 and 39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of native-born people in that category.

"There's very quickly this association with, 'This person wasn't here lawfully,' and a linkage between that and crime," Nessel said. "But what studies have shown is that correlation really isn't accurate."

Immigration detainer issued for Elizabeth murder suspect | NJ.com

Gomez-Serpas, a native of El Salvador, was charged with alien inadmissibility and deported in 2012, Union County Assistant Prosecutor Alan Silver said in court last week. ICE spokesman Alvin Phillips confirmed Gomez-Serpas later returned to the United States illegally.


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