On Friday, local media in Sacramento, California, reported that a Mexican immigrant who killed his three little girls and a chaperone in church before committing suicide, was in the country illegally.
The kicker: Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked to be notified when David Mora was released from jail following a recent arrest.
That arrest occurred five days before he slaughtered his children.
ICE, however, was never told that Mora got out of jail because of California’s “sanctuary city” laws, under which local authorities are forbidden from cooperating with U.S. immigration enforcers.
According to the ABC affiliate in Sacramento, Mora, 39, was granted a non-immigrant visitor visa in December 2018.
Like many illegal immigrants, he simply refused to leave when the visa expired. An ICE spokeswoman declined to say when the visa expired.
The website ImmigrationHelp.org says that visitor visas are typically good for between three months and 10 years, depending on where the immigrant came from.
Mora was arrested on Feb. 23 for resisting arrest, battery on a police officer, and driving under the influence. He ended up in jail for punching a highway patrolman during a DUI stop.
It’s unclear whether his arrest would have triggered a deportation. But ICE definitely wanted to know if or when he got out of jail.
Unfortunately, local law enforcement was prohibited from sharing that info.
In addition, it’s unclear how he got a gun. Mora was the subject of a domestic injunction, sought by the mother of the girls because Mora was considered suicidal and mentally unstable, according to local media reports.
Local media reported that there was some speculation that Mora killed the girls and the person who oversaw his court-ordered visits and himself because he feared being deported, and would lose access to his daughters, who were 13, 10, and 9.
The awful irony of this situation is that Mora was likely safe to remain in the country under President Joe Biden’s lax immigration policies.
As the Associated Press reported on this case, “It is not clear whether Mora, also known as David Fidel Mora Rojas, faced a significant danger of being deported despite immigration officials’ interest after his arrest. Although ICE had asked to be notified of Mora’s release, immigration officials did not take any additional steps to deport him after he was released on bail.”
That’s because they were not told.
Still, the AP added, under Biden, “immigration officials put their priority for deportation on people whom they deem threats to public safety or national security or who recently crossed the border. That’s a departure from the Trump administration, which sought anyone in the country illegally for deportation.”+
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