Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland will revisit its sanctuary policy and cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after several violent crimes involving illegal immigrants plagued the community.
Reportedly, Marc Elrich, the county executive, signed the “Promoting Community Trust Executive Order” in 2019 making the county a sanctuary for illegal aliens. This policy determined that the county would not cooperate with ICE to remove the illegals.
However, “hundreds” of criminals have been released back onto the streets by the county in recent years, including illegal immigrants. According to Fox News, ICE stated that no detainers on illegal aliens have been honored in the county in recent years, despite the county claiming that it works with immigration on removing these people (via Fox News):
Despite that claim, ICE says no detainers have been honored in the county in either the last fiscal year or this one. Director Reeves told Fox News Digital this week that in FY 2023, ICE issued 198 detainers, none of which were honored. So far in FY 2024, the agency has issued 119 detainers and none have been honored by the county.
He said those included illegal immigrants with convictions for assault, robbery, illegal firearm possession, sex abuse of a minor, rape and other sex offenses. He also said there was at least one MS-13 gang member among those whom ICE had requested, but they had been rebuffed by the county.
This week, reports broke that an illegal immigrant was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a toddler in Montgomery County. The Washington Post noted that the Salvadoran national, Nilson Granados-Trejo, 25, had been released from Montgomery County custody twice last year even though federal immigration officials requested he be held for deportation proceedings.
🚨 Authorities have charged an illegal immigrant with the murder of a two-year-old, who was caught in the crossfire of a shootout. The suspect had been arrested previously, but local officials in Montgomery County, MD refused to cooperate with ICE & he was released each time: https://t.co/40dwd9HbJD
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 28, 2024
As Guy covered, Granados-Trejo is a MS-13 gang member. The Post noted that a Justice Department immigration judge ordered Granados-Trejo to be removed from the United States on Nov. 7, 2022.
After this news broke, Elrich said the following, according to WJLA: “It is anything violent, anything related to sex offense, child abuse, use of a gun, or any other weapon, it’s a pretty good list of things we’ll deport for and we’ll cooperate [with ICE].”
National Review also noted that illegal immigrants in the county, in several instances, have been arrested over rape:
County schools are not required to disclose students’ citizenship statuses — a policy that gained national attention in 2017 when a 14-year-old girl said that she was raped by an 18-year-old illegal immigrant from Guatemala.
Two illegal immigrants were also arrested in the county in 2019 for allegedly raping an eleven-year-old girl on separate occasions. One of them had been issued a “final order of removal” in 2016 by an immigration judge. The other was known to ICE as a “repeat immigration violator” and had already been deported from the U.S. in 2014, to no avail. Nine illegal immigrants were charged by MCPD with rape and sexual assault in July-October of 2019 — the same year that the county enacted a sweeping sanctuary policy.
Townhall has covered continuously how alleged criminals make their way into the United States through the southern border under President Joe Biden’s leadership.
Townhall reported how an American college student named Laken Riley was murdered while out on a run last week. The suspect arrested in connection with her murder is an illegal immigrant. In addition, a teenage girl in Virginia was allegedly raped by an illegal alien from Venezuela.
Two months ago, Townhall covered how an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua who was deported from the United States five times was sentenced to prison for raping a woman in Ohio. Shortly after, an illegal immigrant in Colorado who was arrested multiple times, as well as deported, was arrested again after he allegedly killed a mother and her son in a car crash. Earlier this month, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was deported from the United States five times allegedly killed a 10-year-old child in a hit-and-run car crash, which Townhall also covered.