An Orange County resident was arrested by federal immigration officials after “Orange County’s refusal to honor ICE’s detainer,” according to a release from the federal agency.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office and local police departments have a history of not fully working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Local authorities have maintained they are able to make their jurisdictions safer by working with all residents of the community, rather than cooperating with ICE. The federal agency has been under increased scrutiny in recent months as enforcement tactics have increased during the administration of President Donald Trump.
Some local elected officials recently signed on to a letter calling for the abolishment of ICE due to the actions currently taking place at the United States southern border as well as ICE raids conducted earlier this year in Orange County.
ICE identified the individual detained on Monday as Uriel Aguilar-Castellanos, who authorities said was taken into custody at his Carrboro home. Aguilar-Castellanos, according to the federal agency, is a Mexican national who was “subject to a final order of removal issued by a federal immigration judge in January 2015.”
Federal officials said Aguilar-Castellanos “pleaded guilty June 27 in Orange County to two counts of sexual battery and was required to register as a sex offender as part of his plea agreement.” ICE said the victim in the case was “a pre-teen minor female.”
Aguilar-Castellanos also had a 2014 conviction on a driving while impaired charge, according to ICE.
“While ICE attempted to keep track of Mr. Aguilar-Castellanos’s case,” the agency said in a release, “local officials did not provide the agency with updates and ICE was therefore unaware of his June 27 release from Orange County custody until he registered with Orange County as a sex offender July 11, which immediately prompted ICE to begin efforts to locate him in the community.”
Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrews honors ICE detainers when the agency asks that an individual be held for 48 hours. The American Civil Liberties Union criticizes this practice as a way to “imprison people without due process.”
Andrews argued that honoring the detainer requests was an effort to keep ICE from otherwise operating in the community. Andrews lost his re-election bid in this year’s primary to a candidate who promised to end the practice of honoring the detainers.
“Nearly 90 percent of all foreign nationals taken into ICE custody this year were targeted following their criminal arrest. Despite efforts by certain groups to misrepresent this reality, the fact is ICE continues to focus its enforcement efforts toward criminals and public safety threats,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Atlanta Field Office director Sean Gallagher said in a release. “When law enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders onto the streets it undermines ICE’s ability to protect public safety.”
Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood issued a response on Wednesday saying that the county properly carried out its duty and that ICE officials had ample time to retrieve Aguilar-Castellanos before his release.
Photo via Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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