I.C.E. News Releases

ENFORCEMENT AND REMOVAL

08/22/2019


South African national removed following conviction for assaulting guard at ICE facility


PHILADELPHIA – A South African national, who recently concluded a 24-month federal prison term for assaulting a guard working at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) facility was removed Tuesday by ICE deportation officers.

Ziyaya Mtola, 45, who was convicted following a 2018 jury trial of assaulting an officer and destroying government property was turned over to ICE for removal in February 2019, as the agency made final preparations for his repatriation.

Mtola assaulted a female corrections officer at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York, in May 2017. After this incident, and continuing over the following 10 days, Mtola destroyed two sprinkler systems in the detention facility, smeared feces on a cell door, and destroyed a cell window.

Mtola was ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2012, and made multiple attempts to impede his removal. In 2014, he was convicted federally of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, in violation of and two counts of failure to depart the United States, for which he served nearly three years in federal prison.

He was removed to South Africa Aug. 20, without incident via ICE Air Operations.