Law enforcement officials in Charles County, Maryland, released a convicted rapist living unlawfully in the country after ignoring a request to hand him over to deportation officers and suspending nearly his entire 20-year prison sentence.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Henry Argueta-Tobar, a 19-year-old Guatemalan national living in the U.S. illegally, on Wednesday in Waldorf, Maryland, the agency confirmed in a press release. Deportation officers were able to nab Argueta-Tobar after local officials allegedly refused to cooperate on requests to transfer him into their custody.
“After unlawfully entering our country, Henry Argueta-Tobar made his way to Maryland and victimized one of our residents,” ERO Baltimore acting Deputy Field Office Director Vernon Liggins stated. “We could not allow him to continue to threaten our communities.”
“ERO Baltimore will continue to prioritize public safety by relentlessly pursuing unlawfully present sexual predators and egregious criminal noncitizens,” Liggins continued.
Federal immigration authorities first encountered Argueta-Tobar when he was apprehended by Border Patrol in May 2019 after he illegally crossed into the U.S. near El Paso, Texas, as a minor, according to ICE. Border Patrol transferred custody of him to ICE and then was ultimately released into the country on an order of recognizance.
The Charles County Sheriff’s Office charged Argueta-Tobar with second degree rape and arrested him on Dec. 22, according to ICE. The agency lodged a detainer request — which asks local authorities to alert deportation officers when a migrant will be released from their custody — on Dec. 27, but ICE says the Charles County Detention Center refused to honor the immigration detainer.
The Guatemalan national was convicted of second degree rape and sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Circuit Court for Charles County, according to ICE. However, the court then suspended his prison sentence to just 190 days.
Argueta-Tobar was released from local custody on July 3, according to his profile on the Maryland sex offender registry. He is listed as a “tier 3” sex offender in the state, which means he must remain on the sex offender list for the rest of his life.
Deportation officers were able to apprehend him in Waldorf, Maryland, on Wednesday and he remains in the agency’s custody, ICE confirmed.
This is not the first example of a criminal illegal migrant enjoying a dramatic reduction in their prison sentence upon conviction in a Maryland courtroom.
The Daily Caller News Foundation was on site to witness the ICE apprehension of Darwin Adonai Garcia-Garcia last month. Garcia-Garcia had been convicted of a sex offense and false imprisonment by the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County in May and sentenced to three decades in prison, but was able to quickly re-enter the local community when the court suspended his sentence to just 229 days.
An investigation by a local news outlet in July discovered that circuit court judges in Baltimore County repeatedly gave light sentences to illegal migrants charged with child sex crimes, even those with a history of repeated arrests and convictions as heinous as child rape.
Charles County, Maryland, heavily sways toward the Democratic Party, according to local election results. A spokesperson for the county did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DNCF.
Featured image credit. (Flickr/U.S. Department of Homeland Security)
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