Washington Times: More than 100 immigrants the Obama administration released back into the community went on to be charged with subsequent murders, according to government data released Monday that raises new questions about whether immigration authorities are doing enough to detail illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.
In one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted its agents didn’t find out about an illegal immigrant’s death threats and court injunctions against him — which should have put him back in detention — until after the man was accused of a new murder.
That case, involving Apolinar Altamirano, is the latest instance of someone who’d been through the Obama administration deportation system but had been released, only to go on to commit major crimes.
ICE officials say they don’t regularly notify local authorities when they release someone, and don’t have a way of finding out from those authorities whether someone has gotten in trouble with the law again, so they didn’t know whether Mr. Altamirano’s $10,000 bond should have been revoked.
“ICE was not aware of the injunctions against Mr. Altamirano until after his January 22, 2015 arrest for first-degree murder, armed robbery and related offenses,” the agency said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, and Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican in whose state the murder occurred.
All told, 121 immigrants who were held but eventually released by ICE went on to commit “homicide-related offenses,” the agency said.
