According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), federal agents arrested a Guatemalan man last month who had been convicted of sexual attack and molestation of children.
Police arrested the 55-year-old guy in Providence on April 17; he has not yet been named. According to ICE, the man came into the United States without permission in 2008 and has been here without permission ever since.
In August 2018, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) put in place a detainer against the man. This was soon after he was caught and charged with sexual assault and molesting a child in the first degree.
ICE says he was found guilty of those charges in December 2022 and given a 25-year prison term. He later got a shorter sentence: six years with the other 19 years suspended.
As soon as the man finished his sentence last month and the R.I. Department of Corrections told ERO Boston that he was free to go, he was arrested on the detainer.
The man will stay in ICE custody until he has a meeting with an immigration judge.
“This unlawfully present Guatemalan national has been convicted of sex crimes against a minor,” ERO Boston Director Todd Lyons said. “He has already violated U.S. immigration laws, and we will not allow him back out into our Rhode Island neighborhoods to re-offend.”
New York is looking closely at Rhode Island’s stance on working with ICE. Earlier this year, two more Guatemalan men were caught on charges of child molestation for coming into the country without being checked. The men were both freed on bail even though immigration officials wanted them. Since then, ICE has criticized the state’s stance on detainers.
Earlier this year, ICE agents arrested a Honduran man suspected of murder in Warwick after learning he had been charged with felony assault and freed on bail. They also arrested a Nigerian man who had been convicted of indecent solicitation of a child.
Rhode Island U.S. District Judge John McConnell made a decision in 2014, and Gov. Dan McKee’s office has said many times that the state is following that decision. That ruling said that an ICE detainer alone is not enough for the state to hold someone in jail.