Illegal immigrant charged in killing of toddler in Maryland was arrested last year and released
ICE requested that he be held for deportation hearing; Montgomery County turned down the request
Nilson Granados-Trejo, 25, of no fixed address, was arrested Friday on charges of first- and second-degree murder and related counts in the killing of 2-year-old Jeremy Poou-Caceres, who was caught in the crossfire outside an apartment complex in Langley Park, Md., police said. Jeremy’s 17-year-old mother was injured in the shooting. . . .
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said Wednesday afternoon that Granados-Trejo was arrested last year in Montgomery County on theft charges, which did not meet the threshold of the list of crimes to which the county enforces ICE detainers.
However, Elrich, a socialist, “disputed the idea that the county is a sanctuary jurisdiction.” He explained:
What we. . .do is limit the degree of cooperation with ICE. . . .We have. . .two pages of crimes for which we enforce detainers, and it’s anything violent, anything related to sex offenses, child abuse, use of a gun or any other weapon.
He did not list drug crimes. The gunfire that killed the toddler stemmed from a drug dispute.
Montgomery County proved to be a sanctuary jurisdiction for Grandos-Trejo. That it’s not a sanctuary for certain other criminals will be of scant consolation to the wounded mother of the dead two-year-old.
As far as I can tell, Elrich did not explain why the County doesn’t cooperate with ICE when it comes to criminals like Grandos-Trejo. Does Elrich think it’s okay for non-violent criminals, including drug dealers, with no right to be in the U.S. to remain here? Does he imagine that just because the offense they were caught committing is non-violent, these criminals pose no threat of violence?
Grandos-Trejo’s case should put paid to any such assumption.
The way I look at it, Grandos-Trejo did the people of Montgomery County a favor when he was arrested for theft (twice, by the way, and ICE asked that he be detained both times). He signaled that he needed to be deported before he committed more crimes.
Unfortunately, my far-left County chose not to act on this signal. Instead, it stood up to the big-bad ICE, leaving Grandos-Trejo free to commit the most violent of crimes.
News of this case follows news that a young Georgia nursing student was killed and disfigured by an illegal immigrant who entered our country in 2022. The killer was detained at the Mexican border but released for further processing. Republicans have pointed to this case, quite rightly, to highlight the danger posed by the Biden’s administration’s failure to control the border with Mexico.
The left and some libertarians respond that the crime rate for illegal immigrants (putting aside their illegal entry) is lower than the crime rate for Americans born in this country. This may be true, but it’s irrelevant.
Yes, the U.S. is plagued by thugs who were born here. If we could deport many of them, I would be for it. But we can’t. With our soft-on-crime officials and judges, it’s difficult enough just to incarcerate them.
When it comes to illegal immigrants, we are less helpless. We could (1) get serious about preventing these people from entering the U.S., as the Trump administration did and (2) get serious about deporting them after they are arrested for committing crimes by having local officials cooperate with ICE.
Doing so would reduce the number of crimes committed here. It would have prevented the killing of the Georgia nursing student and possibly the Maryland toddler (Grandos-Trejo did not act alone in the commission of that crime).
It won’t reduce the number of crimes committed here by native born Americans and legal immigrants — that would require different policy changes. But so what? That’s no reason to tolerate crime committed by illegal immigrants. Every offense they commit adds to the number of crimes we experience in our crime-ridden country.
Closing the border would carry economic consequences. Analyzing those and weighing them against the other effects of illegal immigration is beyond the scope of this post, and possibly beyond my ability.
But there are no adverse economic consequences to deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes. It’s scandalous that left-wing officials like Marc Elrich refuse to cooperate fully with ICE in making this happen.
Disgusting. Still, the reason Elrich won't cooperate with the nasty feds running ICE is easy to see (if wonderfully ironic and absurd): He thinks Jefferson Davis was right. Maybe his next move is to fire on Ft. McHenry.
Right on. There's nothing more bogus than the claim American citizens commit more crimes per capita than illegal immigrants, even if the claim is true, which I doubt. If American citizens kill six people and illegal immigrants kill five, there are five murder victims who would be alive if the border was closed.
Jim Dueholm