An illegal immigrant accused of raping a woman was released back into the community and immediately returned to his alleged victim’s house after Oklahoma authorities ignored the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention request Wednesday, the immigration agency said in a statement.
On 30 September this year, Antonio Ulises Perez was detained on suspicion of rape. ICE agents conducted an interview with the immigrant and filed a detention request with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office. However, the police did not act on the request and let the migrant go free Wednesday, giving ICE a one-hour notice, hardly enough for immigration agents to reach the jail and take custody of the immigrant in time, according to reports.
The man immediately went to the victim’s home, but fled the scene after the woman contacted law enforcement. He was eventually apprehended by ICE in Oklahoma city the same day and remains in immigration agency custody, the statement says.
“It is unconscionable that someone who is sworn to uphold the law would find it acceptable to release an alleged rapist who is illegally present in the US back into the community when there are other options available under federal immigration law,” Marc Moore, the field office director for ICE Dallas, said in a Thursday statement, according to The Daily Caller. “Within a few hours of being released, this illegal alien was back at the home of the rape victim where he was free to re-victimize her and harm other members of the community.”
According to the statement, this was not an isolated event, as over the past few months Oklahoma has “routinely failed to honor ICE detainers by releasing criminal aliens back into the local community.”
The agency claims that about 90 percent of illegal immigrants apprehended in fiscal year 2019 either had a criminal conviction or carried pending criminal charges, had illegally re-entered the country after being deported, or were an “immigration fugitive subject to a final order of removal.”
The agency stated that detention requests constitute the bulk of arrests conducted by immigration enforcement agents, as about 70 percent of all ICE arrests take place after the agency is notified about an illegal immigrant being released from local custody. According to The Daily Caller report, ICE lodged over 160,000 detention requests with local agencies in fiscal year 2019.