How could this guy have been deported/removed 19 times and still return?
A Mexican man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus that traveled through Kansas had been deported 10 times and voluntarily removed from the U.S. another nine times since 2003, records obtained by The Associated Press show…
Court filings show Martinez-Maldonado has two misdemeanor convictions for entering without legal permission in cases prosecuted in 2013 and 2015 in U.S. District Court of Arizona, where he was sentenced to serve 60 days and 165 days respectively.
A status hearing in the rape case is scheduled for Jan. 10. Defense attorney Lisa Hamer declined to comment on the charge, but said, “criminal law and immigration definitely intersect and nowadays it should be the responsibility of every criminal defense attorney to know the possible ramifications in the immigration courts.”
One of my first reactions (and perhaps yours, too) was, “this is the sort of thing that led to Donald Trump’s election.” You may recall that the very first furor about Trump, when he first declared his candidacy, was his claim that Mexico was exporting illegal immigrant rapists.
It’s not that quite a few of the illegal immigrants (most of whom, of course, are not rapists) aren’t being prosecuted for immigration violations. Some most definitely are:
Nationwide, 52 percent of all federal prosecutions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 were for entry or re-entry without legal permission and similar immigration violations, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
That’s an awful lot of prosecutions. And Martinez-Maldonado was prosecuted, too. Just not effectively:
Records obtained by AP show Martinez-Maldonado had eight voluntary removals before his first deportation in 2010, which was followed by another voluntary removal that same year. He was deported five more times between 2011 and 2013.
In 2013, Martinez-Maldonado was charged with entering without legal permission, a misdemeanor, and subsequently deported in early 2014 after serving his sentence. He was deported again a few months later, as well as twice in 2015 ”” including the last one in October 2015 after he had served his second sentence, the records show.
You might even call Martinez-Maldonado a commuter.
There are remedies on the books, but:
ICE said in an emailed statement that when it encounters a person who’s been deported multiple times or has a significant criminal history and was removed, it routinely presents those cases to the U.S. attorney’s office for possible criminal charges.
Cosme Lopez, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona, declined comment on why prosecutors twice dismissed felony re-entry after deportation charges against Martinez-Maldonado in 2013 and 2015 in exchange for guilty pleas on misdemeanor entry charges.
That would be an interesting question for them to answer. Is it that they were overwhelmed with similar cases? Or had they given up on keeping this recidivist illegal immigrant out of the country? Or did they just not just think him dangerous enough to bother with a felony prosecution?
Most of Martinez-Maldonado’s family live in Mexico. But some live in the US (the article doesn’t say whether legally or illegally). Here’s their attorney speaking:
“(President-elect Donald Trump) can build a wall 100 feet high and 50 feet deep, but it is not going to keep family members separated. So if someone is deported and they have family members here … they will find a way back ”” whether it is through the air, under a wall, through the coast of the United States,” Trevino said.
Ah, but I bet it will deter quite a few of them. Plus, if Martinez-Maldonado’s family members who live in the US are illegally here also, why not deport them, too? If he’s so into family unification, why not unify the entire family in Mexico? And if his family residing in the US is here legally, there are legal avenues by which he could have applied to come here.
“Ah, but I bet it [a wall] will deter quite a few of them.” [Neo]
The Israeli wall was successful in limiting Palestinian infiltration and bombing, but, reality aside, to the left walls just won’t work!
Oh, and the Berlin wall, too.
All child rapists should be castrated.
Any illegal caught the third time should have a permanent tattoo affixed to their forehead, then deported. Any American then hiring them, earns felony imprisonment with loss of citizenship.
“Obama.”
Geoffrey’s outrage pot (potentiometer) goes to 11.
I am just going to call bullshit on this story about him actually, physically being deported/leaving the country 19 times. I bet if someone looks deep enough into this story, they will find that the only thing done was he was asked to leave and was then released, while a box somewhere was checked “deported”.
“Cosme Lopez, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona, declined comment…”
See? There’s your transparency of government for you.
Hola, Buenos Dias,
I can come as an Iranian, Syrian, refugee across the border and cause mayhem. You better not oppose or I’ll call you racist.
Since they knew the guy there probably wasn’t a lot of additional effort needed to determine the legality of his status. Just pick him up and send him home. He goes along with it, because it’s easy to come back (though he did serve two sentences).
Multiply this across all of the ICE offices and ask yourself if all these repeat offenders that we keep reading about are just a way for ICE to juice their statistics? Whatever the program is, it certainly is not acting as a deterrent.
The US Attorneys are part of DOJ. All under Eric Holder until he resigned.
Wonder what he’s living on, after all these years of “public service.”
I hope Trump/Sessions do exactly what Clinton did on taking office: Fire and replace them ALL. Not just a few; for doing that Bush’s AG Gonzales was pilloried by Democrats, but all, just like BJC.