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A Colombian national in the U.S. illegally and charged with the rape of a child as seen during his arrest by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents in Lynn on March 28. (Courtesy / ERO)
Boston-based U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested two illegally present immigrants charged with raping Massachusetts children as well as another charged with murder in his home country.
Over the last week, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations’ Boston office has announced that it has arrested both a Colombian national and a Guatemalan nation on separate charges of raping Massachusetts girls, as well as an accused fentanyl trafficker and murderer from the Dominican Republic.
The arrests began on March 21, when ERO agents arrested the Dominican national near his home in Saugus. ERO says the man faces local fentanyl trafficking charges, has previously been arrested for assault and battery and is wanted for murder in his home country.
“This unlawfully present Dominican national fled his home country to avoid a murder trial,” Boston ERO director Todd Lyons said following the arrest. “He made his way to Massachusetts and has been repeatedly apprehended by local authorities and charged with crimes of violence and drug crimes. ERO Boston will not allow the world’s offenders to take refuge in our communities.”
A criminal court in the city of Bani in the Dominican state of Peravia issued a warrant for his arrest for the charge of homicide, which brought him to the ERO’s attention, the agency says.
The next month he was charged in two Greater Boston courts on serious drug and assault charges. He was charged in Newburyport District Court with trafficking fentanyl, which is still pending, and then later in Boston Municipal Court in West Roxbury on strangulation and assault and battery on a family member, but those charges were later dismissed.
Then came the alleged child rapists, both of whom were arrested on March 28.
An unidentified 33-year-old Guatemalan who faces a slew of criminal charges including nine counts of indecent assault and battery on a child less than 14 years old was arrested near his Lynn residence, according to an agency statement.
“His very presence in our community represents a dire threat to our residents,” Lyons said.
The man has appeared several times in District Courts in the Greater Boston area, including Lynn District Court and Boston Municipal Court in East Boston, but those courts eventually dismissed all criminal charges, according to ERO Boston.
Finally, child rape charges first arraigned at Lynn District Court stuck and were indicted up to Essex Superiuor Court where he was arraigned Feb. 26 on nine counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, rape of a child, two counts of assault and battery, and intimidation of a witness.
ERO lodged an arrest warrant and immigration detainer for the man on Nov. 20, 2023, ahead of the case’s indictment, but the agency says the state court system “refused to honor” the detainer and released the man.
Now that ERO has detained him, he will face an immigration judge’s ruling.
Also that day and in Lynn, ERO agents arrested a Colombian national charged with the rape of a girl older then 14.
ERO says the man entered the U.S. over the southern border in Eagle Pass, Texas, where he was arrested in July 2022 by the U.S. Border Patrol. The ERO enrolled him in an Alternatives to Detention program.
Lynn police arrested him in January and he was arraigned in the Lynn District Court for the rape and indecent assault and battery of a minor over 14. The ERO lodged an immigration detainer against him that day, but says the Essex Sheriff’s Department released him from custody.
Essex Sheriff Kevin Coppinger said that his and all Massachusetts Sheriff’s offices are barred by state law to hold a person in jail purely on an immigration detainer. This was settled by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court in 2017 in their finding in Commonwealth v. Lunn that state authorities do not hold someone purely on federal immigration detainers and that the individual must be released if all other release conditions are met.
Coppinger said that when a person came and posted bail for the Colombian national, his office shared with ERO that there would be a potential release, as his office “had no authority to maintain custody of the individual without violating state law.”
“We appreciate our law enforcement partners as we all strive for the same goal — to keep our communities safe,” Sheriff Coppinger said. “We not only enforce the law, but we are also mandated to operate within the law.”
Now that ERO agents have arrested him, he will face an immigration judge.
“There are few crimes more disturbing than the sexual assault of a child, and no person more disturbing than one who would prey upon the most innocent members of our communities,” Lyons said.
A Colombian national in the U.S. illegally and charged with the rape of a child as seen during his arrest by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents in Lynn on March 28. (Courtesy / ERO)
A Dominican national in the U.S. illegally, charged locally with fentanyl trafficking and wanted in his home country for homicide, as seen March 21 when ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents arrested him in Saugus. (Courtesy / ERO)
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