Migrant woman released on $500 bail for child rape, arrested by ICE

U.S. immigration authorities this week granted a migrant accused of raping an underage girl at a Massachusetts shelter a trial, even though officials detained him before he could get there.

Cory B. Alvarez, a 26-year-old Haitian national, is accused of sexual assault in March at a Rockland inn-turned-lodging facility.

Although ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division in Boston obtained an immigration warrant on the day of his arrest, the district court released Alvarez in June on $500 bail.

The suspect was then arrested by ERO agents on Tuesday, shortly before he was due to be questioned in court over the alleged rape. Prosecutors have expressed concern that they will not be able to hold a due process following the intervention of federal immigration authorities.

“(If he) leaves the state with immigration authorities or ultimately leaves the country, it will become increasingly difficult for the Commonwealth to gain access to him,” Shanan Buckingham, assistant district attorney for Massachusetts, told NECN.

Experts who spoke with Newsweek said the case reflects the disorganization and overlapping jurisdictions of current immigration policy, with various state, local and federal agencies asserting their authority and often getting in each other's way when an illegal immigrant is accused of a serious crime.

Another alleged rape case by migrants made headlines in New York this week: According to police, a woman in Coney Island was attacked at knifepoint by two migrants.

It was unclear Thursday whether immigration authorities have already intervened in this case, but it is common practice for the Department of Homeland Security to step in when an illegal immigrant commits a violent crime, taking the person into custody and awaiting deportation from the United States, regardless of what legal stage their case is in.

“The immigration enforcement bureaucracy is, for lack of a better word, slow and stupid and does not work well with others,” said Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic Newsweek.

“There can be obstruction of law enforcement just as often as aiding and abetting, and I think you can see evidence of that in the Massachusetts case where ICE intervened and arrested someone, effectively preventing a court date.”

Kagan, who has practiced immigration law for many years, said the Alvarez case is not an anomaly and that defendants can effectively use immigration enforcement as a “means of escape” if they cannot appear in court because they are in federal custody.

The professor said that if a crime involves two suspects, one of whom is a U.S. citizen and one of whom is an illegal immigrant, only the former can be brought to justice, while the latter will simply be deported.

ICE often releases details about suspects it arrests, including whether they have violated local or federal laws and whether they have been deported from the United States at least once before, only to re-enter and commit another crime.

Kagan argued that this shows that the system in its current form is not working, even though it appears to be trying to fight criminals by getting them out of the country.

“If someone has committed a very serious violent crime that carries a long prison sentence, then the best way to get them incarcerated if you want them to be incarcerated would be to charge them with that crime and incarcerate them under the law, as you would any citizen, regardless of immigration or citizenship status,” Kagan said. Newsweek.

“It's tempting and politicians really like to ask why this person hasn't been deported,” he continued. “But if you believe that someone has committed a really serious crime, I think you want them to be prosecuted and treated by the criminal justice system the same way we would anyone else.”

In New York, 24-year-old David Davon-Bonilla from Nicaragua, who is accused of raping the woman under the Coney Island boardwalk on Sunday, had previously been charged with attacking a woman in a migrant shelter in Brooklyn.

The other suspect, Leovando Moreno, 37, of Mexico, was arrested in New Jersey in 2022 for public indecency. New York Times reported.

In the Boston case, Alvarez entered the United States legally in June last year, but violated entry requirements. In March, he is alleged to have raped the underage girl.

Boston's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested him outside his Brockton residence on Tuesday.

“He will face justice and ERO Boston will continue to work with the Massachusetts criminal justice system, but we cannot allow an alien who poses a significant threat to the children of our communities to reoffend,” ICE said in a press release.

“ERO Boston will continue to make public safety a top priority by apprehending and deporting criminal aliens from New England.”

Newsweek reached out to ICE on Wednesday seeking further comment on its actions that may interfere with criminal proceedings.

So far in the current fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2023, ICE has deported more than 15,000 people with criminal convictions and just over 4,000 with pending criminal charges.

“Deporting them is a means of releasing them,” Kagan said. “So if you really want someone locked up, the way to do it is to criminally charge them with a crime that carries a prison sentence.”

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