An illegal alien smuggled a woman’s daughter into the U.S. and sexually abused her after promising her mother a job, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said Tuesday.
Ramon Pedro arrived at a land border crossing at the Ysleta Port of Entry in Texas with his alleged daughter in April when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials took him and his daughter into custody.
Both were released under the condition that they would show up for their immigration court hearings.
Pedro and his alleged daughter were admitted to Fresno Community Regional Hospital in Fresno, California, on July 26 to undergo screening for Tuberculosis when doctors determined the girl had been raped.
Once hospital staff notified the police, they determined that Pedro was not related to the girl, according to a DHS official.
The DHS official said the victim had been told by her mother “to accompany Pedro to the United States” so he could find the mother a job.
The Huron Police Department in California arrested Pedro the following day and charged him with rape, forcible sexual penetration, oral copulation, and endangering/causing injury to a child. The illegal alien is currently being held in Fresno County Jail on $310,000 bond.
It is unclear whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have issued a detainer request on Fresno County Jail for Pedro, given California’s support of sanctuary policies protecting illegal aliens from being detained and deported by ICE.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims, however, stated in May during a roundtable discussion with President Donald Trump that she opposes California’s sanctuary laws and has allowed ICE agents access to the Fresno County Jail.
This latest case of an illegal alien allegedly claiming to be part of a family to exploit loopholes within the country’s immigration laws comes as the U.S. debates over whether illegal migrant families should be separated when they are apprehended at the border.
The number of illegal alien families arriving at the border increased when smugglers figured out that adults carrying children over the border would be less likely to be deported than single adults. In the past year alone, the number of illegal migrants using minors to cross the U.S.-Mexico border increased by 315 percent.
Trump implemented a “zero-tolerance policy” directing officials to criminally prosecute all illegal migrants who entered the U.S. illegally. The policy resulted in illegal alien adults who crossed the border with children to be separated — federal officials detained the adults and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took custody of the children and housed them in shelters.
President Trump signed an executive order keeping illegal migrant adults and children detained together until federal immigration officials deport them, but U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to reunite the roughly 2,500 migrant parents separated from their children by July 26.
HHS challenged Judge Sabraw’s July 26 deadline to reunite the migrant children separated at the border with the adults who brought them over, claiming the unification deadline posed a problem because it did not allow proper time to verify the adults’ claims of parental guardianship.
The California judge, however, announced that the Trump administration must not only reunite the migrant parents already separated by law enforcement but also find deported migrant parents who separated themselves from their children in the U.S.
Judge Sabraw announced Friday that he would appoint a federal official to assist lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who are counseling the deported migrants on how to meet their children in the U.S.
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