Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities arrested a criminal illegal immigrant on Jan. 4 that a Virginia sheriff let free after his arrest on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor and production of child sexual abuse material, the agency said Monday.
The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office arrested the individual in July, charging him with carnal knowledge of a child between the ages of 13 and 14 without force, possession of child sexual abuse material, and producing child sexual abuse material.
Later that day, the Pacific Enforcement Response Center lodged an immigration detainer against him with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Fairfax, Virginia, which didn’t comply with the detainer and released the noncitizen without notifying ICE.
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“Fairfax County refused to honor the ICE detainer lodged against this Honduran noncitizen,” acting Deputy ICE Field Office Director Erik Weiss said in a statement Monday. “When ICE detainers are ignored by local authorities, the public is put at risk; unfortunately, this time the result was the unnecessary injury of a federal law enforcement officer while prosecuting the arrest of a noncitizen charged with sexually abusing a Virginia minor and producing child sexual abuse material.”
During his latest arrest, the Honduran national assaulted a deportation officer, according to ICE.
The 21-year-old Honduran national snuck into the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor and was eventually apprehended by Border Patrol agents, who released him into the country in January 2020 with a future court date to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to ICE. He was released to his father in Alexandria, Virginia, the next month.
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The Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sheriff’s office doesn’t hold inmates past their release date “unless an ICE administrative request to detain the inmate is accompanied by a criminal detainer issued by a court,” according to a 2018 memo.
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