Illegal alien, wrongly given temporary amnesty, arrested for molesting minor

Another child was allegedly sexually assaulted multiple times by a Central American illegal alien who should have been deported, had our laws been properly implemented.

Yesterday, Customs and Border Protection announced that the U.S. Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, working with a local Border Patrol agent, arrested an illegal alien from El Salvador in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on three counts of first-degree rape against a child between 2014 and 2016.

While every illegal alien crime, by definition, is avoidable if we had the proper border and interior enforcement in place, this case has an extra wrinkle to it. Andres Fuentes-Castro, 44, according to CBP, was encountered by U.S. Border Patrol-New Orleans Sector agents in 2007 during a traffic stop in Baton Rouge. He would have been deported and this alleged sexual assault would never have occurred, but Border Patrol found he was given Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a Salvadoran national under the El Salvador TPS program. His status later expired in 2010 and was not renewed, rendering him a fugitive alien for nine years for not departing the country.

If our laws were functioning the way Congress designed them, Fuentes-Castro would have been deported in 2007. TPS was not designed to be an amnesty program for illegal aliens; it was designed as a sixth-month temporary stay for those who are here legally but can’t return home because of an intervening natural disaster.

El Salvador was granted that status in 2001 because of an earthquake. That status, pursuant to law, should have been terminated within six months or at most after 18 months of extensions under “extraordinary circumstances” (clearly lacking here). It should have applied only to very few people who happened to be in the country traveling during the earthquake. But instead, it was handed out to over 200,000 Salvadorans, far more than any other TPS-designated country, and is still being used 18 years later!

Why? Because it has been handed out to illegal aliens in the country, a complete debasement of the 1990 law Congress passed. The reason why El Salvador has the most TPS recipients is not because there happened to be 200,000 Salvadorans traveling on tourist visas visiting Disney World on January 13, 2001, when the earthquake struck. It is because that is the TPS-designated country with the most illegal aliens.

In 2007, Fuentes-Castro should never have had this status as an illegal alien, certainly not six years after the earthquake. But a number of criminals and particularly MS-13 members (who largely come from El Salvador) have been allowed to remain in the country against statute and commit countless avoidable crimes. Previous administrations violated the plain letter of the law. President Trump vowed to change this, and indeed ended TPS for certain countries, but has continued it for El Salvador at the behest of an extraordinarily lawless court ruling that defies multiple statutes, including one stripping the courts of jurisdiction over the issue.

Rather than clamping down on TPS abuse, Republicans and Democrats in Congress as well as some in the administration are seeking to expand this policy to Venezuela at a time when illegal immigration is increasing from there.

Also in Louisiana, on the same day, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that another illegal alien was arrested on child sex charges. ICE has placed a detainer on Tomas Gabriel Chox-Lopez, who was caught in a child porn sting by state and federal law enforcement and charged with seven counts of possessing pornography involving juveniles under the age of 13.

Earlier this year, Miguel Martinez, an illegal alien who had previously been deported in 2005, was arrested in Louisiana on 100 counts of possession of pornography involving juveniles under the age of 13 years old, one count of production under the age of 13, and one count of sexual battery of a juvenile under the age of 13.

Often, illegal aliens remain in this country and are not deported after their first interaction with law enforcement because of sanctuary cities. In the case of Andres Fuentes-Castro, it was because of lawless federal executive policies that are against statute. Enforcing existing laws would go a long way in preventing rampant horrible crimes like this. Is it too much to ask that we not import other countries’ child molesters?

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