Sheriff Kenny Lemons never expected to deal with MS-13 criminal aliens after taking office 10 years ago in tiny Clay County, Texas, a rural area near the Oklahoma border. But thanks to the surge in Central Americans in recent years and what he believes to be lax cooperation with ICE from some of the larger metro areas in Texas, highway 287 has become a conduit for drugs and gang members passing through his city. The latest case of Douglas Guevera-Medrano, a 20-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, underscores the problem.

Douglas Guevera-Medrano was caught in Clay County last Monday after a half-day manhunt involving multiple law enforcement agencies attempting to apprehend him. He had numerous outstanding warrants from Dallas County and is now booked in Sheriff Lemons’ Clay County jail on evading, failure to identify, and outstanding charges in other parts of Texas. According to KFDX, Guevera-Medrano has six outstanding charges from Dallas County for criminal mischief and theft, four charges of criminal mischief, theft, and failure to identify from Farmer’s Branch, and charges from Richardson, Texas, for criminal mischief and theft. According to the sheriff, ICE immediately placed a detainer on him.

The question Sheriff Lemons asked in an interview with CR is: “Why did it take this manhunt in my county in order for this threat to be taken off the streets?”

The outstanding warrants stemmed from an arrest in Dallas County last March, Lemons told me. “Once he made bond last year, he was released without an ICE detainer being placed on him. The reason I was upset about it is because the man shouldn’t even have been in Clay County, if that ICE hold would have been placed on him once those charges were done. He should have been detained and held until the charges were completed and deported to El Salvador. This is ridiculous. We could not show any detainer ever being placed on him, and either way, he should never have been out on the streets. He has been in the country illegally since 2014 and is a member of the MS-13 street gang. We know that the neighborhood he grew up in El Salvador was predominantly controlled by MS-13.”

According to the sheriff, the manhunt was triggered when Dallas County “subsequently worked a case investigation which led to a warrant being issued for him for the same time for other offenses, and those were fresh warrants that had not been served at the time of his arrest.” The sheriff served all those warrants, and Guevera-Medrano is now being held on $250,000 bond. He has not posted bond yet, but the sheriff was very clear that he intends to honor the ICE detainer if he does post bond and transfer him to federal custody.

The sheriff said that ICE originally would not have known about this guy unless Dallas County had called and asked for a detainer. It’s important to note that while many counties, including Dallas, are not official sanctuaries to the degree that they will disregard ICE detainers (which is illegal in Texas after passage of SB4), they often fail to proactively seek out detainers and notify ICE.

The danger in cases of criminal aliens is that dangerous threats that could easily be eliminated are placed back on the streets once they post bond. There’s a limit to what can be done to hold Americans who post bond, but criminal aliens who post bond for criminal arrests should always be turned over to ICE and held for deportation. This ensures that there is no gap of coverage.

While it is true that ICE agents do see arrests entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), they often miss first-time alien offenders, especially if they evaded Border Patrol at the border and slipped into the country without an encounter. With their fingerprints not on record, ICE has no way of knowing who they are.

Furthermore, criminal aliens are often coached to give false identities. If their fingerprints are already on record, ICE will be pinged and will try to reconcile the differences between the prints and the name, but if their fingerprints were never on record, the only way for ICE to know about the arrest if the locality is not proactive is if an ICE official was posted at the jail at that time.

As one ICE official told me, “Biometric information uploaded through NCIC is only as good as the data that accompanies it, and given the reality that persons may provide incorrect name and/or citizenship information to local jurisdictions upon arrest, it’s not uncommon for persons to elude detection in jurisdictions that restrict ICE’s access to interview persons in local criminal custody.” While sanctuary jurisdictions are particularly bad, the ICE official noted, without having the particular information on this case, that even other jurisdictions that apprehend aliens “who may only briefly be in local custody and are released prior to an ICE officer being able to interview them” can slip through the cracks.

Sherriff Lemon’s department certainly was proactive in notifying ICE. “Once ICE was notified by my agency, they had no problem putting a detainer on him, so this just leads you to believe that they possibly never knew this guy was in custody in Dallas last year,” he said. “We do things differently here. This guy can post all the bond he wants, but he’s not getting out … on the streets again until ICE picks him up or a court order to release him.”

This is the difference between a proactive local law enforcement agency and a sleeper sanctuary jurisdiction. Many major cities in this country will not actively notify ICE about what they consider to be “low-level crimes.” This is how so many illegal alien crimes go undocumented.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), between June 1, 2011, and March 31, 2019, 189,000 illegal aliens were charged with more than 303,000 criminal offenses. That might sound like a lot, but in reality the true number of illegal aliens arrested for crimes in Texas is likely exponentially higher, because DPS only counts those whose fingerprints have a positive ID from DHS. Easily fewer than half of the criminal aliens encountered by Texas law enforcement have previously been in DHS custody, especially those caught for a first crime. Anyone who successfully evades capture at the border is not in the federal system, and the criminal elements tend to evade detection more often because they obviously don’t surrender at the border like the family units do.

According to Texas DPS, “These figures only count individuals who previously had an encounter with DHS that resulted in their fingerprints being entered into the DHS IDENT database. Foreign nationals who enter the country illegally and avoid detection by DHS, but are later arrested by local or state law enforcement for a state offense will not have a DHS response in regard to their lawful status and do not appear in these counts.”

All those who evaded capture and went on to commit their first crimes are not documented in the report, and often they are released to commit even more crimes before ICE even knows about it.

Even among those who are known, they have collectively racked up “arrests for 549 homicide charges; 33,449 assault charges; 5,836 burglary charges; 38,185 drug charges; 420 kidnapping charges; 16,229 theft charges; 24,126 obstructing police charges; 1,698 robbery charges; 3,570 sexual assault charges; 4,777 sexual offense charges; and 3,049 weapon charges.”

Sheriff Lemons is now concerned with the growth of transnational cartel and gang members in Texas and that rural areas will have to start dealing with what Dallas and Houston have long been confronted with on a daily basis.

“Most of our deputies are not equipped to deal with MS-13 gang members, so it’s very concerning that the border problems have now gotten to northern Texas.” (For more from the author of “How Weak Urban Cooperation With ICE Exposes Rural Areas to Criminal Aliens” please click HERE)

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What percentage of illegal aliens crossing the border are claiming asylum? Eighty percent? Fifty? That’s what you’d think from listening to the news and the politicians. But what if I told you it could be lower than ten percent?

The prevailing narrative about our border is that the surge in illegal immigration is dominated by Central American family units who instantly assert a “credible fear” of persecution and are immediately processed as asylum seekers and released into our interior with the faint hope that they will show up to a court hearing, where their claim will likely be turned down. While it is likely that the perception of bogus asylum claims as the key to obtaining release into our country is what motivated this wave originally, it appears that few of them are even asserting a bogus credible fear at all. Yet, we are still processing them as if they are legitimate asylees instead of immediately placing them into expedited removal, as required by law.

On Monday, Carl Landrum, deputy chief patrol agent of the Yuma Sector, released a surprising piece of information on Fox News that fundamentally upends the public perception at the border, a fact that would even surprise most in government. “Only six percent of the people crossing the border are expressing a credible fear and requesting asylum,” said Agent Landrum, regarding the Yuma Sector specifically.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has declined to answer my request for similar data for other border sectors.

Yuma is one of the sectors where we are seeing large family units from Central America cross almost daily. A whopping 24,198 individuals in family units have been apprehended in Yuma for the first six months of fiscal year 2019, up from 6,487 in FY 2018. Yuma is the third-hardest-hit sector, behind the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors, so the fact that we have it from the deputy chief patrol agent that only six percent of overall apprehensions in that sector are even expressing a credible fear is earth-shattering and has disturbing ramifications.

This revelation means that our government has essentially vitiated the entire Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and has declared a de facto open border. This is not just about the erroneous interpretation of asylum law. We are shredding every word of the INA and processing and releasing almost all of these people, even those who don’t express a credible fear, rather than immediately placing them in expedited deportation.

It’s true that more people will likely express a “credible fear” if we were to do that, but that assertion should be denied, starting a maximum seven-day clock for an appeal. Thereafter, they can be returned to expedited removal, and no immigration judge, much less an Article III judge, can get involved in any way. That is current law, and no new law can be written more emphatically than the one on the books.

The problem is that at this point, they are all being released, and that clock is never starting. Therefore, even if we track them down later on, they can always reassert their claim at that point and further delay deportation.

I first started to suspect that most of the families were not asserting a credible fear when I examined the USCIS credible fear caseload data for the first four months of the fiscal year. USCIS has received 35,310 credible fear cases for the first four months of this fiscal year. That is a high number, but that is roughly on pace for the same high baseline of FY 2018, when we hit nearly 100,000 cases. We are on pace for about 106,000 claims this year.

One would expect with our border numbers crushing those from last year that, if it’s being driven primarily by asylum requests of Central American families, the dockets would swell even over last year’s numbers. That is simply not the case. There’s been a 370 percent increase in family units for the first half of this fiscal year compared with the first half of FY 2018. The one caveat is that the USCIS credible fear caseload data for February and March, the two busiest months, has not yet been published, but based on what we see for the first four months, it’s clear that credible fear cases are in no way increasing commensurate to the increase of family units coming in.

Furthermore, data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) also confirms this trend. In an analysis titled, “Newly Arriving Families Not Main Reason for Immigration Court’s Growing Backlog,” TRAC asserts, “Since September, about one out of every four newly initiated filings recorded by the Immigration Court have been designated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as ‘family unit’ cases.” That is just 41,488 out of 174,628 cases. And that number is really inflated because, as noted by TRAC, “each parent and each child are separately counted as “court cases” even though many are likely to be heard together and resolved as one family unit.” They conclude that “recent family arrivals” comprise “just 4 percent of the current court’s 855,807 case backlog” as of February 28.

Even the liberal Syracuse University, which is clearly upset that the administration is not doing enough to grant bogus asylum claims, articulates the case I’ve made all along – that nothing in our laws compels this outcome.

Families arriving at the border do not automatically have the right to file for asylum in Immigration Court. Under existing laws, such families must pass a number of hurdles. First, those simply coming for better economic opportunity are subject to expedited removal by DHS – a purely administrative process that doesn’t require a decision by any judge. Simply expressing a “credible fear” of returning to their home county is also not sufficient. Each family must pass a credible fear or reasonable fear review. Those that do not pass this review do not have an opportunity to proceed and present their asylum claims. Again, such individuals are subject to expedited removal from the country.

So why is this administration not placing every single person who comes to the border into expedited removal? Even if they begin asserting the credible fear claims thereafter, those claims can be denied by Trump through his administrative officials without any review from the courts, and then they are placed back in expedited removal.

The only excuse the government has left is that it doesn’t have enough suitable facilities to hold the family units in order to comport with the Flores settlement. But the administration has had months to muster all of its logistical assets and diplomatic prowess with Guatemala and Honduras to begin an airlift to Central America for expedited removal.

Let’s put aside those already released as water under the bridge for the time being. Declaring expedited removal for the next wave of illegal immigrants will send an immediate message to those farther down the pipeline that catch-and-release is over. It would be worth clearing out all the facilities (which they are doing anyway) in order to hold just the next group for the week or so needed for removal. There is no reason why this should take more than 20 days.

Moreover, the president can nullify the Flores settlement, which in itself is a violation of law requiring us to detain these people (8 U.S. Code § 1225(B)(iii)(IV)) and write a new procedure for detaining family units together. The DHS published such a proposal on September 7, 2018, but for whatever reason has never promulgated it.

The laws aren’t the problem. They are, in fact, the solution. This is not about asylum, because most aren’t currently asserting it. Nor is this about asylum law, which was written to prevent this very outcome. This is about the abolishing of our laws and borders. (For more from the author of “Bombshell From a Top Border Agent Reveals Huge Asylum Issue” please click HERE)

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Americans Debbie Burgess and Mark O’Gara were killed this month due to our lack of resolve to secure the border and expeditiously deport other countries’ criminals. In addition, there are many criminal aliens, being allowed to remain in the country way too long, committing rape and child molestation. Sadly, most of these cases will remain unknown to the public.

Father of 10 killed in St. Paul by drunk-driving Central American teen

Mark J. O’Gara, a 52-year-old father of 10 children, was killed on April 3 in St. Paul when he was pulling out of a driveway and was hit by a speeding drunk driver. That driver was Jose O. Vasquez-Guillen, a 19-year-old illegal alien who came here in 2016 from Honduras. No, not all those innocent faces the media shows at the border will be harmless upstanding citizens once they are resettled in this country. Vasquez-Guillen was ordered deported in 2016 by an immigration judge — in absentia, because he failed to show up to his immigration hearing. He was a fugitive until he was arrested by ICE this month.

Once again, this is another case where our broken policies are allowing these individuals to obtain catch-and-release with the hope that they show up for a hearing in front of an immigration judge. Sadly, they often commit deadly crimes after it’s already too late to apprehend them. There are over one million illegal aliens with final deportation orders who remain in the country, including 644,000 from Mexico and Central America. Last month, a Guatemalan teen who was the recipient of catch-and-release killed a beloved mother and schoolteacher in a driving wreck in Mobile, Alabama.

Debbie Burgess killed by illegal immigrant deported nine times

Police in Knoxville, Tennessee, suspect Juan Francisco, an illegal alien with a prior DUI conviction, as the driver behind a hit-and-run that killed Debbie Burgess on April 8. Francisco is still at large. His history goes back as far as 2002, when he was charged with theft, and 2004, when he was charged with reckless driving. According to an ICE official I spoke to, the Juan Francisco they have on record was actually deported nine times, but they will not publicly confirm it until they actually apprehend him and verify his identity.

Just last December, the Knoxville fire chief’s son, Pierce Corcoran, was killed in a hit-and-run by an illegal alien who crossed over the middle of a highway, striking the victim’s vehicle in a head-on collision. The grieving parents have not gotten justice yet from Francisco Franco-Cambrany, a Mexican national, because the perpetrator was deported after it was too late and after he was released on bond. It appears that ICE feared he’d evade justice altogether and remain in our country, so it quickly deported him to Mexico.

CASA “election canvasser” arrested for murder

Not all the illegal aliens working for CASA de Maryland are merely working on civil rights for peaceful “immigrants.” Darwin Reynadi-Rosa was arrested by police in Montgomery County, Maryland, for serving as the driver and lookout for an assassination-style shooting that left one man seriously wounded. According to WJLA, CASA confirmed that Reynadi-Rosa was indeed employed as “an election canvasser,” but was terminated in 2018 for “poor performance.” According to an ICE spokesman, “On April 16, ICE lodged a detainer on unlawfully present El Salvadoran national Darwin Reynadi-Rosa following his recent arrest for assault and attempted murder.” ICE confirmed to me that “an immigration judge previously granted Reynadi-Rosa voluntary departure on Aug. 26, 2008, however Reynadi-Rosa failed to comply with the judge’s order and depart the United States.”

Again, we see that because our government fails to follow expedited removal laws, these criminals get placed in the black hole of immigration courts and can remain in the country. In this case, we had the worst of gang-bangers being allowed to remain and engage in “election canvassing.”

An illegal alien recipient of catch-and-release charged with raping a 7-year-old girl

Even rural Culpeper County, Virginia, is not immune to the criminal alien activity that plagues northern Virginia. Last Thursday, Oscar Ramirez, a 33-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, was charged with raping a seven-year-old girl between April 6 and 7. According to an ICE official, Ramirez was picked up in Roma, Texas, in 2005 but was released on his own recognizance pending an immigration hearing. Ramirez absconded and was order deported in absentia in August 2006 and has been a fugitive until he was arrested on April 11.

All of these individuals who are not placed into expedited removal, as required by the laws passed by Congress in 1996, are very unlikely to show up to their hearings. All the crimes committed after aliens are either released by the feds or sanctuary cities are, by definition, completely avoidable.

Catching sex slavers: Just another day on the highway

Last week, an astute Ohio state trooper pulled over Juan Carlos Morales-Pedraza, an illegal alien from Mexico, and discovered that he was transporting his 15-year-old sex slave from New Jersey to Chicago. Human and sex trafficking were terms that were rarely used in this country until this decade, yet now they are commonplace, thanks to the criminal aliens that have been brought in and allowed to reside with impunity, against the laws on the books. Morales-Pedraza was previously deported but was able to come back in.

Also in Ohio, Clementino Co-Juc, an 18-year-old illegal alien from Guatemala, was charged last week in Defiance County, Ohio, with the rape of a minor.

The rash of criminal alien murders, drunk driving, drug trafficking, and sex offenses in this country demonstrates the need for more ICE agents. At the border, we need a change in policies to follow the actual laws on the books so that these people are immediately deported without access to the courts. But for the estimated two million criminal aliens already in this country, we need more manpower to apprehend them before more Americans are harmed.

By ramping up deportations and then putting together a comprehensive plan to stop illegal immigration and counter the cartels at the border, we will stop needlessly importing other countries’ criminals and prevent avoidable crimes from taking place. As it stands now, there are nearly 60,000 foreign nationals in the federal prison system in the custody of Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals. It costs $1.42 billion a year. In addition, our government has continued the suicidal policy of counting these people in the Census! Thus, we pay for the rope that hangs our own people in more ways than one. (For more from the author of “Criminal Alien Rampage: Homicide, Molestation, Drunk Driving” please click HERE)

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