The chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee is seeking answers from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the immigration and criminal history of an illegal alien accused in the brutal hammer attack, rape and murder of a 64-year-old California woman last month.
Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is inquiring about Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, a 29-year-old Mexican national who stands charged with raping, torturing, and murdering Marilyn Pharis in Santa Maria, Calif.
Martinez and 20-year-old Jose Fernando Villagomez were arrested in the July 24 attack, which occurred in Pharis’ home. She died eight days after.
“It appears that Martinez has been arrested several times since 2009, but through a combination of sanctuary city policies that the Santa Maria Police Department was required to follow and official disinterest in the cases on the part of ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], Martinez was eventually released to allegedly murder Ms. Pharis,” Grassley wrote to Johnson.
Martinez was in police custody related to an arrest for a gun charge just five days before the attack on Pharis. He was sentenced to a 30-day jail sentence, but was not scheduled to begin serving the sentence until October. Despite the charge, ICE declined to issue a detainer request to take custody of Martinez.
ICE confirmed to The Daily Caller over the weekend that the agency did not file a detainer on Martinez in that case because he had not been deported in the past and because he did not have a felony record. (RELATED: Feds Declined To Detain Illegal Alien Charged In Hammer Attack And Rape Of California Woman)
That refusal marks a change in outlook for ICE, which filed a detainer request against Martinez following his May 22, 2014 drug possession and sexual assault arrest.
The charge was downgraded to misdemeanor battery. ICE issued a detainer in that case, however, but the Santa Maria County sheriff’s department declined to honor the request.
According to Grassley, the sheriff’s department declined the detainer because the county has sanctuary policies which prohibit local agencies from cooperating with federal immigration agencies.
Martinez was also arrested in 2009 for driving without a license. In that case too, ICE chose not to issue a detainer request.
“Clearly, there has been a total breakdown in cooperation between local and federal law enforcement that allowed this alleged killer to be released and, despite his lengthy and violent criminal record, never deported,” Grassley wrote in the letter to Johnson, who has come under heavy criticism for advocating for relaxed deportation policies.
The Republican asked Johnson to provide immigration and criminal records from ICE and other DHS agencies, such as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
He also seeks to find out if Martinez has applied to USCIS for amnesty protection under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
ICE’s inconsistent handling of Martinez’s cases exposes what some say is a fatal flaw in a new enforcement priority schedule enacted in November by the Obama administration.
Through DHS, Obama made the deportation of illegal aliens who have been convicted of violent felonies and those who pose a national security threat the highest priority for removal. That means that some criminals, who like Ramirez have committed violent acts but have not been convicted of felonies, are deemed a lower priority for deportation.
The administration has also refused to attempt to force cities and counties with sanctuary policies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies. Some Republicans have floated legislation to cut federal funding to such sanctuaries, but the Obama administration has adopted a strategy of trying to open lines of communication with local agencies to get them to be more cooperative in immigration investigations.