Why would a judge in Fairfax County, Virginia release a sex offender with a detainer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Perhaps residents in northern Virginia should demand an answer to that question — and soon.
ICE first encountered Ander Cortez-Mendez in February 2018, when the Guatemalan crossed illegally into Texas and was ordered to appear before an immigration judge. Cortez-Mendez apparently didn’t bother to comply, and has remained in the US ever since. Six years later, Cortez-Mendez reappeared as a sex offender after being convicted of sexual intercourse with a minor in March 2024.
So what happened? Despite the nature of the offense, the Fairfax County judge suspended his three-month sentence and refused to cooperate with ICE for deportation:
The ICE Washington, D.C. office lodged an immigration detainer against Cortez-Mendez with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center on March 18, 2024, but officials say the detention center refused to honor the ICE detainer and released Cortez-Mendez.
The Fairfax County Circuit Court found Cortez-Mendez guilty of having sexual intercourse with a child on May 20, 2024. The court sentenced Cortez-Mendez to three months in prison but suspended the entire prison sentence.
ICE didn’t bother to press the matter … under the previous administration, anyway. In the Donald Trump administration, this is how sex-offender illegal aliens get handled:
How did a judge decide to suspend a sentence for a sex offender, regardless of his residency status? Did the judge even require Cortez-Mendez to register as a sex offender? Given the careful description of the conviction and the sentence, it appears that he was convicted of a Class 1 misdemeanor under 18.2-11(a) rather than a felony. It suggests that the action was consensual and that the victim’s age was within 3 years of Cortez-Mendez’, who was 20 at the time of his conviction — unless this got pled down from a felony. (The age of consent in Virginia is 18, but there are provisions for misdemeanor charges if the age gap is three years or less and the sex is otherwise consensual.)
Nonetheless, Cortez-Mendez was convicted of a sex crime, and should have had both jail time and supervision after release, even if he wasn’t an illegal alien. Why any court or law-enforcement agency would run interference for a sex-offender in the country illegally is inexplicable except as cheap virtue-signaling to those enamored of their luxury beliefs in “sanctuary” policies.
And so, Fairfax County let a sex offender free as a political rebuke to those who want immigration law enforced. Perhaps the people of Fairfax County are comfortable with that trade-off, but I suspect that the people of Fairfax County probably never knew about it. Well, they certainly know about it now — so will they do something about replacing their officials who put virtue signaling above public safety?
At least we now have leaders in DHS and ICE who take enforcement seriously, and who allow their officers to do their jobs.
