California lawmen killed by twice-deported illegal with criminal background

California lawmen killed by twice-deported illegal with criminal background

The suspect in the shooting deaths of two California sheriff’s deputies on Friday is an illegal from Mexico who was deported twice before, in 1997 and 2001.  The man’s name was first reported as Marcelo Marquez, which apparently is the name he’s been living under in recent years.  He has also reportedly used other aliases, but his real name seems to be Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte.  He is known to have at least one drug conviction in Arizona.

On Sunday, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ stated that the county had turned Monroy-Bracamonte over to federal authorities in 1996 after he was arrested there.

It’s not clear how long Monroy-Bracamonte has been back in the U.S. (one friend of his female companion’s remembers him from the Salt Lake City area three years ago), but there is no record of his being detained or deported since 2001.

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ABC, obedient to the approved narrative on these topics, had this to say about Monroy-Bracamonte:

How he escaped detection was a mystery on Sunday.

His background would have almost certainly flagged him to be expelled from the country again, but he managed to stay under the radar until his arrest Friday on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and carjacking in the deaths of two sheriff’s deputies during a shooting rampage in Northern California.

How Monroy-Bracamonte “escaped detection” is less of a mystery if we look at where he was living, and the record of the Obama administration on pursuing deportations for illegals in that area.

Monroy-Bracamonte was involved in the Friday incident in north-central California, and appears to have been living there and in other parts of the interior of the United States, not close to the southern border.

The Center for Immigration Studies has determined, using federal deportation records, that the number of deportations from the interior has declined by 58% since 2009.  In 2009, there were 236,376 deportations by ICE from the interior; in 2014, the total is slightly more than 100,000.  (CIS’s projected figure is 100,114.  The annual totals go by fiscal year; the final total for FY2014, which ended on 30 September, have not been released yet.)

Moreover, the reason for the decline is the use of “prosecutorial discretion,” to refrain from deporting illegals who’ve been identified as good candidates for deportation.  CIS observes the following (emphasis added):

Paradoxically, the decline in ICE interior enforcement, including a decline in criminal alien deportations, has occurred over a time period in which ICE was able to identify more criminal aliens than ever before. Basic ICE metrics tracked by the agency on a weekly basis indicate that ICE continues to run a massive catch and release program in which agents are forced to release more deportable aliens than they are allowed to put on the path to deportation.

According to ICE officials speaking off the record, the decline in interior enforcement activity has less to do with local sanctuary policies and much more to do with policies of prosecutorial discretion that severely limit the circumstances in which ICE officers can arrest or charge an illegal alien encountered. For example, ICE officers, with few exceptions, are required to wait for illegal aliens to be convicted of crimes before initiating deportation proceedings, even if the aliens are otherwise deportable. …

[S]imilarly, only a fraction of those aliens labeled as a criminal threat at the time of encounter were selected for deportation by ICE in 2014. According to the weekly ICE metrics report cited above, as of September 20, 2014, ICE officers had reported 170,125 encounters with aliens deemed a criminal threat. Meanwhile, only 90,500 criminal aliens were issued charging documents, indicating a startlingly large number — potentially nearly 80,000 — of illegal aliens with criminal histories who were able to escape deportation proceedings in 2014, even after being encountered by an ICE officer.

One thing these numbers make clear is that it’s quite possible Monroy-Bracamonte didn’t escape detection.  It may be that somewhere in the U.S. federal government, someone knew he was here, and just never did anything about him.

But even without raising that suspicion, we can conclude from the numbers themselves that he almost certainly “escaped detection” because no meaningful resources were put into “detecting” him.

The two officers killed were Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver, a 15-year veteran of of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, and Investigator Michael Davis, Jr., also a veteran of 15 years with the Placer County Sheriff’s Department.  Davis, 42, left behind a wife and four children; Oliver, 47, left behind a wife and two children.

Michael Davis, Jr. was killed 26 years to the day after his father, also a sheriff’s deputy, was killed in the line of duty.  Michael Davis, Sr. was killed in a narcotics operation in Riverside County, CA in 1988.

Acknowledgment: Officer Down Memorial Page
Acknowledgment: Officer Down Memorial Page
J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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