Stream of Local, Federal Decisions Kept Illegal Alien Free

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report to Prince William County supervisors that details the agency's investigation of an illegal immigrant who is charged with killing a local nun in a drunken driving crash.

The County Board of Supervisors filed a lawsuit against DHS because until March 4, it refused to release investigative reports of Carlos Martinelly-Montano, who was charged in August 2010. The DHS report is 27 pages and the cover letter states that portions of eight pages are being withheld in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

"I am pleased that the lawsuit succeeded in finally getting their attention, but DHS still has not yet fully responded to the initial FOIA request issued on November 16, 2010," said County Chairman Corey Stewart. "It is a shame that we had to resort to filing a lawsuit to get to this point.  This report is missing the underlying documents that would lead us to evaluate this report in full."

Judicial Watch, a group that investigates alleged government corruption, released a chronological time line of  how Montano may have gone under the radar of deportation agents.

On Dec. 7, 2007, Montano was convicted for DUI in Prince William County, where he was sentenced to 30 days in jail, with all 30 days suspended.

"Local authorities did not seek to determine Montano's immigration status nor did they contact ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)," Judicial Watch states in its report.

About a year later, Montano was charged again with DUI in October 2008, when local officials determined he was in the country illegally. Federal agents filed an immigration detainer against Montano and took him into custody on Oct. 7, 2008. Instead of deporting him, federal agents released him on a program called Alternatives to Detention, which uses GPS to monitor him.

On March 5, 2009, Montano was charged with failing to appear on a charge of driving without a license in Fairfax County, but the charge was dismissed two months later. Judicial Watch states that no one contacted federal immigration agents about the arrest.

On April 27, 2010, Manassas Park police charged Montano with reckless driving, but Judicial Watch says there is no record of him being booked or fingerprinted or that Manassas Park officials contacted federal immigration agents. Montano was convicted of the charge on June 1, 2010, and fined $500. Still, no one notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On April 29, 2009, Montano was convicted on the October 2008 DUI in Prince William Circuit Court. He was sentenced to a year and three days in jail, but the judge dismissed 11 months and 13 days. Montano served less than two weeks in jail for his second DUI.

Shortly after his release from jail, ICE took Montano into custody on May 7, 2009. Because federal immigration agents were never notified about his prior arrests and there's no mention that federal agents did a criminal check of his record, ICE determined that Montano complied with the monitoring program and he was released on an old order of supervision from 2008 that required he report to ICE agents on a regular basis.

"Decisions by the Executive Office for Immigration Review caused delays in the removal proceedings. Moreover, Montano's immigration attorney successfully convinced an immigration judge to delay Montano's removal hearing on two occasions," Judicial Watch states in its report. 

Montano's deportation hearing was scheduled for Aug. 19, 2010. But on Aug. 1, 2010, he was charged with drunken driving in a crash that killed Sister Denise Mosier, a local Benedictine Nun, and injured two other people in that vehicle.

The reason federal agents decided to release Montano instead of detaining him until his hearing was because, "In 2008, when the decision was made to release Montano, fewer beds were available in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area."

The DHS report also mentions that federal immigration agents were given broad discretion on government policies on how to use detention resources.

"The Obama administration used this discretion to release Montano in 2009 after he served jail time for his 2008 drunken driving arrest," the Judicial Watch report states. Judicial Watch also states that the Obama administration in July 2010 decided that it would not take legal action against localities if local law enforcement officials failed to communicate with federal immigration officials, as is the case with the Modano charges.

The Judicial Watch charges that federal immigration agents were ordered to focus on deporting illegal immigrants suspected of terrorist activities and those charged with violent crimes based on information it has from the DHS reports.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said sanctuary policies that prohibit local police from contacting federal immigration agents when they have a suspicion that someone is in the country illegally are killing people.

"The local police are the first line of defense once an illegal alien crosses the border and too often they are prohibited from doing what they are trained to do and follow their instincts in caching bad guys," he said.

Prince William County officials and Judicial Watch also noted that one of the reasons DHS did not release these reports in a timely manner was because federal officials claimed they had not completed the report. But the reports county officials and Judicial Watch received this month are dated Nov. 24, 2010, which leads local officials to believe that DHS would "mislead the U.S. District Court, as well as Prince William County, Congressman Frank Wolf’s office and Judicial Watch, when they claimed that the report was not complete in February."

"If this is the cleaned-up version of the Homeland Security report, I can't imagine what bombshells were included in the original version," Judicial Watch states in a public release on its website. 

Stewart said there are still numerous unanswered questions regarding DHS's handling of illegal aliens who are released to federal agents for deportation.