JACKSON, NJ — ICE is already here, but is their presence in Ocean County enough when local judges continue to release criminal migrants back into the community under the protection of New Jersey’s sanctuary state laws?
Federal immigration authorities have lodged detainers, taken defendants into custody and conducted arrests across Ocean County while local prosecutors pursue criminal cases involving three deaths and at least six injured people over the past two years.
The deaths came in two crashes. While their immigration status did not cause either wrecks, the cases raise hard questions about unlicensed driving, repeat arrests and whether federal and local officials acted before lives were lost.
Maria Pleitez, 42, and 11-year-old Dayanara Cortes died after Raul Luna-Perez crossed the centerline and smashed head-on into their Nissan in Lakewood on July 26, 2025. Prosecutors said Luna-Perez was traveling about 60 mph with a blood-alcohol concentration of at least .19 and cocaine metabolites in his blood.
Another child and Luna-Perez’s passenger survived with injuries. Luna-Perez, a Mexican national identified by ICE as unlawfully present, pleaded guilty to two aggravated manslaughter counts and assault by auto.
That case shows how ICE custody works and the New Jersey criminal justice system fails. He had several DWI’s under his belt and a domestic violence charge, yet he was illegally living in the country and set free multiple times by local judges.
After a judge released Luna-Perez to strict home detention, authorities transferred him to federal custody under an ICE detainer, then returned him to Ocean County custody when prosecutors upgraded the charges.
Another child died Aug. 28. Prosecutors said Maria CobonGuzman, 20, struck a mother pushing her 9-month-old son and 5-year-old daughter through a Jackson grocery-store parking lot.
The baby, Yitzchok Rosenberg, died at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, while his mother and sister survived. Prosecutors charged CobonGuzman with manslaughter and assault by auto, saying she had never held a valid driver’s license in any state.
Ariadna Lazaro-Flores, 22, of Toms River, allegedly knew CobonGuzman was unlicensed but allowed her to drive. A judge ordered both women held in the Ocean County Jail pending trial, and jail records reviewed for this report listed ICE detainers for both defendants.
The injury cases stretch further.
Edwin Ramirez-Carranza received five years in prison after prosecutors said he blasted through a Lakewood red light at roughly 106 mph and seriously injured an off-duty police officer.
In March, Jose Perez-Parada of Jackson struck a child on Hope Chapel Road and fled, leaving the victim in critical but stable condition. ICE identified Perez-Parada as a Mexican national who entered the country unlawfully and lodged a detainer after his arrest.
ICE has also targeted defendants outside the traffic cases. Shore News Network reported detainers involving a Toms River child-sex-assault defendant, a Lakewood drug and weapons suspect and a man sentenced for an armed Jackson home invasion.
An ICE detainer asks a jail to notify federal agents before releasing a person and, when legally permitted, briefly hold that person for transfer. It does not erase state charges, establish guilt or automatically place someone in immediate federal custody.
The answer, then, is blunt: ICE has already arrived. On April 1, federal agents arrested Mexican national Rubiel Gabriel Nolasco in Jackson after ICE said Border Patrol had returned him to Mexico twice in 2021.
