7/14/2022 Illegal Immigrant Arrested for Allegedly Raping Ten-year-old Ohio Girl at Center of Viral Abortion StoryRead Now Police arrested an illegal immigrant on Tuesday after he allegedly raped and impregnated a ten-year-old girl who reportedly traveled from Ohio to Indiana for an abortion, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The outlet reported that 27-year-old Gershon Fuentes confessed to raping the ten-year-old child on at least two occasions. He has been charged with rape and is being held on a $2 million bond, according to the report. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on Fuentes, who is from Guatemala, a source told Fox News. The child became the subject of national media attention after the Indianapolis Star reported earlier this month that an Indianapolis-based abortionist named Caitlin Bernard was asked by a child-abuse doctor in Ohio to help the young girl get an abortion in Indiana. The report said Ohio’s abortion law, which went into effect after the overturn of Roe v. Wade and bans most abortion after six weeks, prevented the girl from receiving an abortion in her home state. Even President Biden recently cited the girl’s story while criticizing the Court’s decision saying, “Imagine being that little girl. I’m serious. Just imagine being that little girl.” The story came under scrutiny, however, for relying upon a single source — Bernard — and for including scant details. Detective Jeffrey Huhn testified Wednesday that Columbus police became aware of the girl’s pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children Services that was made by her mother on June 22. He said the girl had an abortion in Indianapolis on June 30. The Supreme Court overturned Roe on June 24. The child had identified Fuentes as her rapist, Huhn testified. He said DNA from the clinic in Indianapolis is being tested against samples from Fuentes. National Review has reached out to the Columbus Police Department and Franklin County Children Services for comment. LOS ANGELES (AP) — A sprawling, privately run detention center in the wind-swept California desert town of Adelanto could house nearly 2,000 migrants facing the prospect of deportation. These days, though, it’s nearly empty.
The Adelanto facility is an extreme example of how the U.S. government’s use of guaranteed minimum payments in contracts with private companies to house immigrant detainees might have a potential financial downside. In these contracts, the government commits to pay for a certain number of beds, whether they’re used or not. The government pays for at least 1,455 beds a day at Adelanto, but so far this fiscal year reports an average daily population of 49 detainees. Immigrant advocates say the number of detainees at Adelanto is currently closer to two dozen because authorities can’t bring in more migrants under a federal judge’s 2020 pandemic-related ruling. The U.S. government pays to guarantee 30,000 immigration detention beds are available in four dozen facilities across the country, but so far this fiscal year about half, on average, have been occupied, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. Over the past two years, immigration detention facilities across the United States have been underutilized as authorities were forced to space out detainees — in some cases, such as at Adelanto, by court order — to limit the spread of COVID-19. “The government is still paying them to keep the facility open,” said Lizbeth Abeln, deportation defense director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in Southern California. “It’s really concerning they’re still getting paid for all the beds every single day. It’s empty.” At a facility in Tacoma, Washington, the guaranteed minimum is 1,181 beds and the average daily population so far this fiscal year is 369, according to official data. A detention center in Jena, Louisiana, has a minimum of 1,170 beds, with an average daily population of 452. ICE currently reports 23,390 detainees in custody, official data shows. The agency has long spent money on unused detention space by including guaranteed minimum payments in its contracts, according to a Government Accountability Office report focused on the years before the pandemic. The minimum number of beds the government paid to guarantee rose 45% from the 2017 fiscal year to May 2020, the report said. Officials at ICE’s headquarters were asked to comment and initially did not. On Monday, an agency spokesperson said in an email that ICE doesn’t comment on pending litigation and is complying with the court’s order regarding Adelanto. In annual budget documents, officials said the agency aims to use 85% to 90% of detention space generally, and pays to have guaranteed minimum beds ready to go in case they’re needed. Officials wrote that they need flexibility to deal with emergencies or sudden big increases in border crossings. They said safety and security are the top priority at the detention centers, while acknowledging the pandemic “greatly decreased bed utilization.” The average cost of a detention bed was $144 each day during the last fiscal year, the documents show. Immigrant advocates say the pandemic is proof that the U.S. doesn’t need to detain immigrants as much as authorities have claimed. Deportation agents have ramped up use of a monitoring app to keep tabs on immigrants heading for deportation hearings instead of locking people up, they said. As of June, the agency was tracking more than 200,000 people using the SmartLink app, the government’s data shows. “The federal government, probably like all of us, didn’t think COVID would go on this long,” said Michael Kaufman, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which sued for the release of detainees in Adelanto. “This has been an accidental test case that shows they don’t need a detention capacity anywhere near what they’re saying.” The Adelanto facility — which is run by Boca Raton, Florida-based The Geo Group — is one of the biggest in the country and often houses immigrants arrested in the greater Los Angeles area. It has long been subject to complaints by detainees of shoddy medical care, and on a 2018 visit to the facility inspectors also found nooses in detainees cells and overly restrictive segregation. During his time as secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas has often said that our current immigration crisis has been partly caused by what he claims was a broken and dismantled immigration system inherited from the Trump administration.
As a veteran of more than 30 years in immigration enforcement, I can tell you that statement is a lie. Just like the lies this administration tells about how the border is secure, the border is closed, the border is under operational control, the Border Patrol’s mounted agents whipped Haitians, and many more. Here are the facts. It is the Biden administration that dismantled the most secure border we ever had, and the data proves it. Illegal immigration was down 83% to 90% after President Donald Trump and his administration, including myself, made the necessary policy decisions to address the loopholes that Congress has failed to address. Within his first few weeks in office, President Biden signed over 90 executive orders that “dismantled” almost every policy created under Mr. Trump. He dismantled the Migrant Protection Protocol, better known as the Remain in Mexico program, which allowed migrants to still claim asylum, but to do it from Mexico until their hearing rather than be released into the U.S. and rarely show up in court for their immigration hearings. Even when they do show up in court, the data from the Executive Office of Immigration Review — our federal immigration courts — show nearly 9 out of 10 Central Americans that claim asylum never get relief from federal courts because they either do not qualify or do not show up in court. The vast majority who are ordered to be removed never leave, and just live here illegally hoping for the next amnesty bill to be passed. The “Remain in Mexico” program was a game-changer, and it worked. Many people didn’t bother making the journey and attempting asylum fraud because they knew they wouldn’t be released into the U.S. Catch-and-release was ended by the implementation of this Trump program. They dismantled the Asylum Cooperative Agreements, better known as the Third Safe Country Agreements, that were created in partnership with the three Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras). This was a historic agreement with the countries that are the three biggest importers of illegal aliens into the U.S. The agreement was simple. If you claim asylum because you need to escape fear and persecution from your home government because of race, religion, political affiliation or membership in a specific social group, then you should claim asylum in the first country to which you escape. Next, they dismantled the asylum process itself. They were not happy that so few qualified or got relief from the U.S. courts. So, they vastly expanded who qualifies and what qualifies as a valid asylum claim, which would result in more positive asylum approvals. The Biden administration also dismantled the detention system. It ended agreements with local jurisdictions to hold detainees. It shut down other immigration detention facilities. It shut down all family residential centers. The number of detainees went from 55,000 to less than 20,000. |