The Department of Homeland Security has identified other cases like the Charlotte, NC murder suspect granted executive amnesty despite his known a gang affiliations, DHS Sec. Jeh Johnson told a Senate panel Tuesday.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Johnson addressed the circumstances of Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez — a known gang member who was granted President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and is now accused of murdering four people, including a former contestant on “America’s Next Top Model.”
“This case is a tragic case and this individual should not have received DACA. I cannot state that in stronger terms,” Johnson said in response to questions about Rangel-Hernandez from Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.
“In reaction to that case — as I think you know — we’ve gone back and we’ve retrained the entire workforce that deals with these cases to make sure that they identify trouble signs such as suspected membership in criminal gangs,” Johnson said.
The DHS secretary stressed that gang membership should make an illegal immigrant a “priority for removal,” not a candidate for deferred status.
“So we retrained the force and we’ve done a retrospective review of every DACA case. Every DACA participant to see whether there are any similar to this case. We’ve identified some,” Johnson revealed.
“And we continue to evaluate this to make sure that we’e reduced situations like this to zero in the DACA program,” he added.