SEATTLE, WA — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers removed an illegally present convicted murderer to Mexico Dec. 8.
In August 1998, Arturo Rodriguez-Rodriguez, 47, was convicted of murder in the first degree in the Washington State Superior Court for Yakima County and sentenced to 320 months of confinement.
On Nov. 17, Rodriguez-Rodriguez was released from the Monroe Corrections Complex, transferred to ICE custody and housed at the Northwest ICE Processing Center until his removal.
ICE lodges immigration detainers on individuals, such as Rodriguez-Rodriguez, who have been arrested on local criminal charges and who are suspected of being removable, so that ICE can take custody of that person when he or she is released from local custody.
On, Aug. 15, 2001, an immigration judge ordered Rodriguez-Rodriguez removed from the United States.
On Sept. 12, 2019, ICE encountered Rodriguez-Rodriguez at the Washington State Corrections Center and lodged an immigration detainer with the prison. He was later transferred to the Monroe Corrections Complex to complete his sentence.
Rodriguez-Rodriguez was removed from the United States via an ICE Air Operations charter flight and transferred to the custody of Mexican authorities.
ICE is charged with enforcing federal immigration laws enacted by Congress. ICE officers are sworn law enforcement officers who carry out the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens found to be in the United States unlawfully.
Aliens processed for removal may receive their legal due process from federal immigration judges in the immigration courts, which are administered by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). EOIR is an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice and is separate from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Immigration judges in these courts make decisions based on the merits of each individual case. ICE officers carry out the removal decisions made by the federal immigration judges.