D.C.'s 'sanctuary' suburb gets unwanted crime coverage

FPI / September 6, 2019

Since July 25, seven illegal immigrants have been arrested on rape and sexual assault charges in Montgomery County, Maryland.

While most in the corporate media ignored the news, conservative media picked it up and amplified it by noting that the county situated in the Washington, D.C. suburbs is a sanctuary county.

That didn’t sit well with officials in Montgomery County.

County officials blamed conservative media, the White House and a top immigration official for drawing attention to the heinous acts allegedly committed by illegals.

“There has been a lot of inaccurate information spread by the White House, President Trump, Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli, local and national conservative news outlets and neo-Nazi sympathizers regarding our criminal justice system and its process,” the county council said in a statement.

“These individuals and organizations should be ashamed for spreading false information seeking to establish a baseless, illogical and xenophobic connection between a person’s failure to obtain legal status and their propensity to commit a sex crime,” the statement from the city council read.

In July, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, a Democrat, signed an executive order which bars county law enforcement from asking about an individual’s immigration status. The order also prohibits county law enforcement from working with federal immigration agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But conservative media and Cuccinelli noted that the crimes were made possible by the county’s sanctuary policies.

In one of the cases, police say Nestor Lopez-Guzman, a Salvadoran national who is in the U.S. illegally, molested a 12-year-old girl and her younger brother.

After learning of the news, Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, tweeted: “More sanctuary Montgomery county consequences... sad and tragic”


Emilio Carrasco-Hernandez, a 37-year-old Honduran national, was arrested on Aug. 26 on charges of raping a 15-year-old girl at a home they shared in Silver Spring, Maryland. Carrasco-Hernandez had illegally re-entered the U.S. after having been deported in April 2017.

Montgomery County Police arrested 28-year-old Carlos Palacios-Amaya on July 25, and 29-year-old Mauricio Barrera-Navidad on July 26. Both men were charged with second-degree rape for repeatedly raping an 11-year-old girl over the course of several months. Both are illegal immigrants from El Salvador.

Barrera-Navidad was reportedly issued a “final order of removal” by a judge in 2016. Palacios-Amaya was deported at least once, in 2014, and ICE considers him a “repeat immigration violator.”

WJLA’s Kevin Lewis, who has reported extensively on the alleged sex crimes by illegals in Montgomery County, reported that, according to police, 28-year-old Luis Perez-Giron molested and tried to rape a 12-year-old girl while his wife was in labor at the hospital. The victim reportedly fought back. And Perez-Giron ultimately gave up, but not before allegedly threatening to rape the girl "when she turned 13."

Perez-Giron is a Guatemalan national who is illegally in the U.S., the reports say.

Asked about the county’s sanctuary policy by WJLA’s Lewis, Elrich accused ICE of committing terrorism.

“If ICE thinks it’s really important, they can probably get here. You know, they’ve got cars. They know where the jail is. They know where the pre-release center is… It’s not my job to do that part of their job,” Elrich stated. “If ICE manages to be outside the [jail] door when someone walks outside the door, I can’t do anything about that, but if they ask us on anything other than a judicial order, then we’re not holding them.”

Elrich further explained that President Donald Trump’s directives to ICE have discernable parallels to terrorism.

“It’s really partly the definition of terrorism, to take the civilian population and subject them to constant fear, that is terrorism in its basic form,” Elrich remarked.

County law enforcement officials are said to be “furious” with Erlich and the council and have vowed to “take matters into their own hands,” a report said.

Conservative talk show host Vince Coglianese told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Sept. 3 that rank and file law enforcement officers in Montgomery County are fed up.


“The reason why we’re suddenly hearing about this concentration of stories is not that this is a new phenomenon — it’s that rank and file police officers and prosecutors in Montgomery County are furious at their own leadership for allowing this problem to continue to fester for as long as it has,” Coglianese explained.

“These stories haven’t been public before because they’ve been trying to deal with them. But now they’re done trying to deal with them,” he continued. “Montgomery County leadership led by Marc Elrich, the county executive … have made it so that Montgomery County specifically is a place where illegal immigration is protected at all costs — even at the expense of the community.”

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins told Fox News that what is happening in Montgomery County is “really outrageous. What they’ve done now is galvanize the fact that you can come into Montgomery county, commit a crime as an illegal alien and you won’t feel the consequence.”

“You’ll be prosecuted for the state crime but then, once you’re adjudicated, you’re released back on the streets to potentially commit more crimes against the citizens,” Jenkins said.

Coglianese told Carlson that the situation has gotten so bad, “cops and prosecutors are furious and they’re taking matters into their own hands. They want these stories out there.”

Coglianese noted that ICE officials already have probable cause to make the arrests and have issued detainers, but Montgomery County refuses to work with them.

ICE agents have even identified MS-13 gang members serving time in jail and begged Montgomery County not to release the notoriously vicious criminals into the public. “And then they release them,” Coglianese added.

The MS-13 thug just “looks at these jailers in the face, he smiles and walks out the door,” Coglianese told Carlson.

Free Press International