A Honduran illegal immigrant who was previously charged with raping an 8-year-old girl in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was arrested after he was released erroneously from local custody in 2019.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) New Orleans office announced on Monday that 28-year-old Carlos Vasquez was captured and arrested at a worksite in Baton Rouge on Wednesday.
ICE said Vasquez entered the U.S. illegally as a gotaway at an unknown time and was released erroneously from local custody after he was convicted of sex crimes in 2019. ICE added that Vasquez had remained at large.
On April 27, 2017, ERO Baton Rouge filed a detainer on Vasquez with the East Baton Rouge Parish Jail after his arrest for indecent behavior with juveniles, first-degree rape and oral sexual battery of an 8-year-old girl.
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT, MURDER CONVICTIONS IN US: ICE DATA
Two years later, on Nov. 18, 2019, ICE said Vasquez was convicted of the amended charge of sexual battery and was sentenced to six months of imprisonment with credit for time served. On the same date, the court accepted his guilty plea to the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and fined him $500 and court costs of $235, placing him on supervised probation for a period of one year.
However, on the same day, the Franklin Parish Detention Center erroneously released him from custody without notifying ERO Baton Rouge.
Vasquez is now in federal custody, according to ICE.
Last month, data provided to lawmakers by ICE said that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with sex offenses and homicide convictions could be loose on the streets.
The agency provided data to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about national data for illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. The data, as of July 2024, is broken down by those in detention, and those who are not in detention — known as the non-detained docket. The non-detained docket includes illegal immigrants who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody. There are currently more than 7 million people on that docket.
The data says that, among those not in detention, there are 425,431 convicted criminals and 222,141 with pending criminal charges.
"As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket—13,099 criminally convicted MURDERS!" Gonzales said in a statement. "Americans deserve to be SAFE in our own communities."
The Biden administration came under fire for releasing many migrants who came to the U.S. border into the interior, which coincided with a sharp drop in deportations as it focused on prioritizing public safety and national security threats. There were 142,580 removals in FY 23, up considerably from 72,177 in FY 22 and 59,011 in FY 21, but still down from the highs of 267,258 under the Trump administration in FY 19.
The number of illegal immigrants on the non-detained docket, meanwhile, has soared from 3.7 million in FY 2021 to nearly 4.8 million in FY 2022 to over 7 million in FY 2023.
Fox News' Bill Melugin and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
