Vehicular homicide not enough to detain illegal immigrants: DHS
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana said “ICE will work tirelessly to ensure justice is done” in Eswin Mejia’s capture and arrest. (Associated Press) more >
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Monday, April 4, 2016
Even being convicted of homicide isn’t enough to ensure illegal immigrants are detained by federal agents, the government’s top deportation official said in a letter to Congress released Monday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana said neither Obama administration policy nor federal law required her agency to detain Edwin Mejia, an illegal immigrant who arrived as part of the surge of unaccompanied children from Central America, after he was charged with vehicular homicide in Nebraska.
Still, she said her officers should have taken the initiative to detain him of their own volition, and she said she’s notified all of her bureaus nationwide to do a better job of evaluating people they’re called to detain.
Mr. Mejia stands accused of a drunken-driving accident earlier this year that killed a young Iowa woman in Omaha — but federal immigration agents never showed up to collect him, and after he posted bond with local authorities he absconded.
“After further review, we believe that further enforcement action would have served an important federal interest in this case,” Ms. Saldana said in a letter to Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, which the senator released Monday.
ICE said it first encountered Mr. Mejia, who also goes by the first name Eswin, at the border in Arizona in May 2013. He was a 16-year-old at the time, and the Border Patrol, acting under President Obama’s interpretation of the law, admitted him and shipped him to social services, then eventually sent him to live with his brother here in the U.S. Ms. Saldana did not say whether the brother was in the U.S. legally.
In January, police say, Mr. Mejia was street racing while drunk when he struck the vehicle driven by Sarah Root, 21. She died from her injuries, while he posted bond on the homicide charge, and ICE officers did not come pick him up for detention, allowing him to disappear into the shadows.
Now ICE is scrambling to try to find him. Ms. Saldana said her agency has even asked Honduran officials to see if he shows up back there.
Mr. Sasse was not satisfied with the response, calling Ms. Saldana’s response “an embarrassment” to her agency. He has elevated the issue to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, demanding to know who specifically was responsible for deciding not to send out officers to pick up Mr. Mejia.
“Why did ICE decline to detain Mr. Mejia, despite several requests to do so by the Douglas County Police Department? Were each of these requests denied on a case-by-case basis?” Mr. Sasse said in his letter to Mr. Johnson.
Ms. Saldana, in her letter to Mr. Sasse, said being charged with vehicular homicide wasn’t enough to make Mr. Mejia a priority under the standards set by Mr. Obama and Mr. Johnson in 2014. In fact, even if he were convicted of the charge, ICE still wouldn’t have to hold him, Ms. Saldana said.
“Even if he were convicted of the offense, motor vehicle homicide — driving under the influence, the conviction would not constitute a crime of violence under the immigration laws, and consequently, would not constitute an aggravated felony,” she wrote. “The conviction would not render him subject to mandatory detention, nor would it significantly impact his eligibility to apply for relief or protection from removal.”
At a Senate hearing last month Ms. Saldana had said her officers didn’t come to collect Mr. Mejia because Root wasn’t yet dead, so the case didn’t rise to their priorities. Her letter Monday, however, says that even though she was dead, her agents wouldn’t have necessarily considered Mr. Mejia a priority.
Under pressure from activists who said the number of deportations was too high, and after deciding that the number included too many rank-and-file illegal immigrants, Mr. Obama and Mr. Johnson in 2014 announced a new policy of only deporting those with the most serious of criminal records.
Those policies mean that more than 9 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. have little fear of being kicked out.
Mr. Mejia, however, was already facing deportation under his unaccompanied minor case, though that proceeding has dragged on. His court appearance was slated for later this month — nearly three years after he first entered the U.S.
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