Decade after original deportation order, ICE finally nabs MS-13 criminal

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently arrested an MS-13 member who was previously ordered to be deported and was convicted of a crime, the agency said Thursday.

The 24-year-old citizen of El Salvador entered the U.S. illegally in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley as an unaccompanied child in June 2014, according to ICE. Federal authorities served him with a future court date and transferred him to ICE and later the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which handed him over in July 2014 to his mother living in Rockville, Maryland.

An immigration judge ordered his removal from the U.S. in August 2014, when he failed to show up in court, according to ICE.

In November 2016, the Montgomery County Police Department arrested the illegal alien, charging him with assault and weapons violations, according to ICE. The District Court for Montgomery County sent the charges to juvenile court, and, on March 7, 2017, Homeland Security Investigations confirmed his affiliation with MS-13, whose motto is “kill, rape, control.”

The Montgomery County Police arrested the individual again in January 2022, charging him with firearms violations, according to ICE. He was later convicted by the Montgomery County Circuit Court for illegally possessing a firearm, and sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised probation, but the court suspended four years of his prison sentence and dismissed his remaining charges.

ICE arrested the illegal alien on Jan. 10 at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, and he will remain in federal custody pending deportation, the agency said.

“This Salvadoran noncitizen represented a significant threat to the residents of our Maryland communities,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Baltimore Field Office Director Darius Reeves said in a statement Thursday. ERO is responsible for arresting and deporting illegal aliens in the country.

“Not only is he a validated member of a notorious street gang, but he also displayed a willingness to unlawfully carry a firearm in public. ERO Baltimore will continue to prioritize public safety by removing such threats from our streets,” Reeves added.

Border Patrol agents identified 312 MS-13 members entering the U.S. illegally nationwide in fiscal year 2022, 178 in fiscal year 2023, and 10 between October 2023 and November 2023, according to agency statistics.

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