Washington POST: Trump touted these ICE arrests. Half were already in prison
More than two decades ago, El Mansouri and other masked men burst into a family’s home in Oklahoma City. As they pointed guns at the heads of the parents and demanded money, the couple’s six-year-old son crawled under a kitchen cabinet and called 911.
“They’ve got a gun. I’m scared,” the boy told the operator, according to the Oklahoman. “Please come.”
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, state records show that the Republican governor of Oklahoma commuted El Mansouri’s sentence of more than 100 years to time served so the federal government could deport him to Morocco. Immigration enforcement agents took him into custody Feb. 5. The next day, the White House touted the arrest on social media and claimed that the administration’s actions “make America safe again.”
El Mansouri was catapulted overnight from a forgotten inmate into a notorious criminal — an example that the White House publicity machine uses to justify Trump’s calls for the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history.
El Mansouri’s lawyer says her client, a college-educated software engineer, had fallen into an opioid addiction, committed a crime and was punished — but has overcome his addiction, taken anger management classes and apologized to the victims, who did not object to releasing him so he could be sent home.
“I apologize sincerely for the people and the state of Oklahoma,” El Mansouri, bespectacled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, told the state parole board five days before Trump took office. “I just hope that the victims will find it in their hearts to forgive me one day.”
Many criminals removed from prisons, not American streets
The Trump administration has roared into cities and towns over the past two months, often with cameras and celebrity live-streamers in tow, to arrest thousands of immigrants they say pose a threat to Americans. Trump said officers are “achieving the great liberation of America” from criminals; his border czar, Tom Homan, said the arrests are making neighborhoods safer; and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has taken credit for getting “these scumbags off of American streets.”
The Department of Homeland Security said on March 13 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested approximately 33,000 immigrants in U.S. cities and towns since Trump took office, but officials will not release all their names or details about them, such as where they were arrested or specific criminal histories.
The Post’s findings mirror a national dataset posted by the Deportation Data Project, a repository obtained through public-records requests that shows that a similar percentage of the nearly 17,000 immigration arrests made during the same time period were already in jail, contrary to the Trump administration’s assertions that they were making most arrests in American communities. Hints that they were already incarcerated are in the White House’s photos. Some inmates are dressed in prison uniforms, while others appear against a backdrop of cinder-block walls or industrial doors.
Among the arrests the White House highlighted:
Ever Villafañe Martinez, who had been in federal prison since 2009. The onetime drug kingpin from Colombia was convicted 15 years ago of conspiracy to funnel cocaine into the United States through Mexico and sentenced to life in prison. The White House announced his arrest in February, disclosing that his punishment was reduced to 240 months, and he was taken into immigration custody to be deported. As of Wednesday, two months after his arrest, he remained in a Florida immigrant detention center, according to the agency’s website.
Yared Mekonnen, who was arrested inside a federal prison days after Trump took office. The former taxi driver was sentenced to nine years in prison for the sexual assault and attempted kidnapping of an intoxicated female passenger in D.C. in 2017. That sentence was shortened because of good conduct, and upon release, he was expected to register as a sex offender and remain under U.S. government supervision. Instead, he was arrested by federal immigration officers in New Orleans so he could be deported to Ethiopia, which in 2020 was among more than 20 nations that did not always cooperate with deportations. If he can’t be deported, officials would probably be required to release him into the United States. He remained in ICE detention Wednesday in Louisiana.
Carlos Sosa Horellana, who was in the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia, after an arrest in September for assault charges. Sosa Horellana has been deported twice before, illustrating a point often made by advocates for victims that deportation is not the equivalent of a lengthy prison sentence. Nearly two decades ago, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old girl in Richmond. He served only two years, as the judge suspended most of his sentence because he “will be deported to Honduras,” records show. He returned to Virginia and is facing charges for illegally reentering the country, after being convicted of an aggravated felony, and failing to register as a sex offender.