Previously Deported Salvadoran Sent Home on Fugitive Murder Warrant

Immigration officers removed a previously deported Salvadoran wanted for homicide in his native country on Thursday. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers removed the criminal alien after he fled to the U.S. to avoid prosecution for an alleged aggravated homicide.

The 27-year-old Salvadoran, Michael Giovanni Menjivar-Sosa, illegally re-entered the country on December 30, 2017. Border Patrol agents near Pharr, Texas, took him into custody shortly after he crossed from Mexico. Pharr is located in Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Sector. A bridge from the city, the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, connects to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

ERO officers first deported Menjivar-Sosa to El Salvador in January 2017. Salvadoran authorities say that the illegal alien committed an aggravated homicide less than nine months later.

The fugitive is now wanted on aggravated homicide charges. Officials charged him in September 2017 but almost immediately fled the country to try to escape prosecution.

Officers put him on a charter flight and turned the fugitive over to officers with El Salvador’s Civilian National Police (PNC).

“ICE has a long history of working cooperatively with international law enforcement agencies to effect removals to ensure that fugitive aliens are returned to face justice,” Daniel Bible, field office director for ERO San Antonio, said in a written statement provided to Breitbart Texas. “ICE combines our unique immigration enforcement authorities and our international partnerships to help protect our communities from criminal aliens who pose a public safety threat.”

Earlier this month, ICE ERO officers deported another homicide fugitive who had been deported six times since 1999. ERO officers handed 48-year-old Gonzalo “El Chano” Juarez-Limon over to Mexican law enforcement authorities at the international border crossing on the El Paso Stanton International Bridge, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from ICE officials. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office notified ICE officials of an outstanding arrest warrant on Juarez-Limon. Mexican officials stated that the foreign national is accused in the case of a 1996 murder of Manuel Monrroy Islas.

These arrests are part of ERO’s “SAFE” (Security Alliance for Fugitive Enforcement) program. The agency says that it has removed more than 600 criminal fugitives to El Salvador in just the last three years. The criminal alien fugitives were all wanted by the Policia Nacional Civil (PNC). Officers work with foreign law enforcement agencies through Interpol. They also coordinate with Homeland Security Investigations’ Office of International Operations and foreign consular officials in the U.S.