U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have arrested an illegal immigrant from Honduras who is accused of sex crimes, including one involving a minor. The man had been released into the community by local police earlier this year in a sanctuary county in Charlotte, North Carolina.
According to a press release, ICE agents arrested 33-year-old Oscar Pacheco-Leonardo—a Honduran national and repeat immigration violator—during a targeted enforcement operation in Mecklenburg County on Aug. 9.
Pacheco-Leonardo was deported back to Honduras in July 2006 but he subsequently returned. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department arrested him for first degree rape and two counts of indecent liberties with a child on June 14. Two days later on June 16, Pacheco-Leonardo was released from the Mecklenburg County Jail on $100,000 bond.
The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, according to ICE, ignored an ICE detainer issued the day following Pacheco-Leonardo’s arrest, and instead set him free without even notifying the federal agency.
ICE blames Mecklenburg County for causing a “a serious public safety threat” by releasing a previously deported individual facing serious criminal charges, allowing him to potentially harm others for nearly two months until he was captured again.
“This is yet another example of a clear public safety threat being released onto the streets of Mecklenburg County rather than into ICE custody due to the current sheriff’s policy on ICE non-cooperation,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Atlanta Field Office Director Sean Gallagher.
“The Mecklenburg County sheriff’s decision to restrict cooperation with ICE serves as an open invitation to aliens who commit criminal offenses that Mecklenburg County is a safe haven for persons seeking to evade federal authorities, and residents of Mecklenburg County are less safe today than last year due to these policies,” he added.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, a Democrat, declared that his department was withdrawing from a cooperation program with federal immigration authorities shortly after he was elected into office last year. Through the county’s 287(g) program, ICE is authorized to deputize Mecklenburg’s own law enforcement agents to enforce federal immigration laws. 287(g) also allows ICE-trained police officers to screen jailed immigrants, determine immigration status, and hold immigrants for ICE agents to pick up for deportation.
The program has sent more than 15,000 people into deportation proceedings since 2006, and terminating it was a major part of McFadden’s 2018 campaign, reported The Charlotte Observer. Without 287(g), McFadden said, ICE officials will need to have court-issued warrants or detainers to access the jail.
Pacheco’s case, according to ICE, is simply the latest in a continuing list of unlawfully present foreign nationals released from Mecklenburg County custody over the past nine months, despite serious criminal charges that “pose a clear threat to public safety”.
The press release lists 22 other similar incidents of the local law enforcement refusing to cooperate with ICE, resulting in offenders being released back on the streets. These cases cover a very broad range of crimes, from driving under the influence to sexual assault and child rape, and involved suspects who had illegally entered the United States from countries including Afghanistan, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.
Some of them are still at large.
