News and Commentary

California Police Ignore ICE Order, Release Convicted Child Murderer

   DailyWire.com
Border fence wall against illegal immigration - stock photo
japatino/Getty Images

California police have ignored yet another detainer order from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and in doing so, allowed a convicted child murderer to be released onto the streets.

ICE issued the detainer on 44-year-old Salvadorian national Carlos Morales-Ramirez, who was convicted of “second-degree murder, assault on a child causing death, and great bodily injury to a child causing death” back in 1998, the agency said in a press release. Morales-Ramirez was still serving time for the murder at the California Department of Corrections at Pleasant Valley Prison in Chowchilla, California. ICE placed the immigration detainer order on him on August 28, 2013, yet California did not uphold that request and released Morales-Ramirez onto the streets on December 4, 2020.

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Los Angeles was able to locate and arrest Morales-Ramirez on December 10. At the time, agents served him with a Notice to Appear as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, since Morales-Ramirez’s conviction for child murder qualifies him to be removed from the country. He is currently in ICE custody.

ICE places immigration detainers “on individuals who have been arrested on local criminal charges and who are amenable to removal, so that the agency can take custody of that individual when they released from local custody within secure confines,” the agency said in its press release. California failed to honor that order, allowing a dangerous criminal onto the streets. The order was ignored because many cities in California are “Sanctuary Cities,” which refuse to follow federal immigration law by turning over illegal immigrants.

“State sanctuary laws grant law enforcement officials the discretion to cooperate with immigration authorities in instances where serious or violent crimes have been committed; again, we are talking about the murder of a child – rather than working with our officers to ensure this convicted aggravated felon was safely handed over to ICE, he was released back into the community and our officers were forced to exhaust more time and resources relocating and re-arresting him,” said ICE’s ERO Los Angeles Field Office Director Dave Marin.

California’s sanctuary policies continue to fail residents by allowing convicted criminals like Morales-Ramirez to walk free – state officials and advocates need to take a hard look at the reality, and potential consequences, of these misguided laws that leave potential victims wildly unprotected from very egregious criminal offenders,” he added.

The press release pointed to Fernando De Jesus Lopez-Garcia, who had a history of criminal convictions, including “battery of a spouse, assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, battery of an officer, and vandalism.” Despite this lengthy list of violent acts, the Santa Clara County Jail ignored an ICE immigration detainer and released Lopez-Garcia back onto the street, where he killed two people.

At the Time, ICE’s ERO San Francisco Field Office Director David Jennings provided the agency’s “deepest condolences” to “the victims and their families in this case.”

“Here we have catastrophic proof of the abject failure of California’s sanctuary policies. The only person this policy protected was a criminal; permitting him to reoffend over and over again. Had those immigration detainers been honored, or had ICE been notified on any of the other multiple occasions he was arrested and released from local jails, we would have taken him into custody. Regrettably, politics continues to prevail over public safety, the detainers were ignored, and De Jesus Lopez-Garcia was released to the street,” Jennings added.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  California Police Ignore ICE Order, Release Convicted Child Murderer