Saturday's developments follow a shocking turn in the investigation Friday.
On Friday, FOX 5 New York reported that two of the victims may have been
sexually assaulted before they were killed by an illegal immigrant with
a violent criminal history.
According to FOX 5 New York, a sexual attack may have occurred before
Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey were shot to death, and a
fourth victim, 19-year old Natasha Aerial, was critically wounded.
To watch more video coverage of this story, click here to visit MyFoxNY.com
The suspect in the sexual assault, Peruvian national Jose Carranza, is an
illegal immigrant previously charged with raping a 5-year-old. Carranza
surrendered to Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Thursday and plead not guilty to to three counts of murder and one charge each of attempted murder and robbery in Essex County Superior Court on Friday. Carranza, 28, said through a Spanish interpreter that he understood the charges against him.
Carranza had been released on bail for the earlier crime.
Carranza was indicted by grand juries in New Jersey twice this year — in
April on aggravated assault and weapons charges; and in July on 31 counts which
included aggravated sexual assault of a child under 13 years old and endangering
the welfare of a child he had a duty to supervise.He was released on $50,000 bail on the assault case, which stemmed from a barroom fight, and $150,000 bail on the sexual assault indictment, which charged that the abuse began in 2003 when the girl was 4 years old and continued to this year.
Essex County Prosecutor Paula T. Dow would not answer questions about
how Carranza was released on bail despite his illegal immigration status and
charges earlier this year that he raped a 5-year-old, then threatened the
child's parents.
That sounds shocking, but it's happening in Wisconsin too and all over the country - illegal immigrants are committing crimes and receiving bail or even work release jail and they're not being tracked. Can we all now agree on a few things:
- Illegal immigration is a state and local issue too.
- The states do an absolutely horrible job tracking illegal immigrants in the criminal justice system.
- Illegal immigrants who commit crimes should be sent home the first time they offend.
- All illegal immigrants are not "undocumented WORKERS." Illegal immigrant is a better term for the media to use because it defines all illegal immigrants, whereas "undocumented workers" describes only a subset.
- It's not racist to be concerned about the subset of illegal immigrants who are criminals.
- It's about time that someone in Wisconsin creates a system to figure out how many illegal immigrants are in the county jails and courts (NOBODY knows).
- Communities like Waukesha should reconsider and proceed with 287g immigration authority. This mechanism allows local and state law enforcement to have some federal immigration powers. This allows them to hold a Carranza type on an immigration hold if the state system grants bail. It's true that local authorities can call the feds and get them to slap the immigration holds on the inmates. But the 287g would have allowed the locals to implement a cohesive tracking system so they could figure out which inmates/defendants are illegal immigrants in a consistent manner. Furthermore, there are only about 5 ICE agents in the entire state of Wisconsin, so there's no guarantee that they will slap the hold on every time the locals ask for one. The Newark case illustrates the perils of doing nothing.
