An 18-year-old Albert Einstein High School student charged with possessing a deadly weapon on school property was arrested by federal immigration enforcement agents Thursday and faces possible deportation, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mario Granados-Alvarado, a Wheaton resident who is from El Salvador, had been arrested May 1 in Kensington after allegedly driving a stolen car on school property. In the trunk of the car, police found an assault rifle that had been stolen from a City of Rockville police cruiser. Officers also discovered a second stolen car and a second stolen gun nearby.
Granados-Alvarado, whom police previously referred to as Mario Alvarado, was issued a $2,000 bond and released Wednesday, according to court documents. However, ICE had put out a detainer on him the day before and officers with the agency arrested him after his release, according to a press release publicized Monday.
Granados-Alvarado is being detained in the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup, according to the ICE release.
U.S. Border Patrol encountered Granados-Alvarado on March 6, 2014, near Falfurrias, Texas, and determined he had entered the country illegally from Mexico, according to ICE. He was issued a notice to appear in immigration court. Matthew Bourke, an ICE spokesman, wrote in an email that Granados-Alvarado was in removal proceedings at the time of his arrest by Montgomery County police.
In the press release, which was first reported by ABC7, ICE identified Montgomery County as a “jurisdiction that has publicly limited cooperation with ICE and frequently ignores legally authorized detainers.”
“Keeping people safe means not tolerating the release of aliens that present a clear public safety threat back into our communities,” Dorothy Herrara-Niles, a Baltimore field office director with ICE, said in the release. “ICE is committed to fostering positive collaboration with our local law-enforcement partners, and welcomes changes from county officials that would prioritize public safety.”
County officials have insisted the county is not a sanctuary jurisdiction because it cooperates with ICE by providing the agency with county arrest and detention information through the state.
On Friday, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh sent a memo advising local law enforcement agencies against holding undocumented immigrants past their release dates for federal authorities, except in cases where there is a judicial warrant or probable cause, The Washington Post reported. He warned that complying with immigration detainers could put state and local jails at legal risk.
“As an overriding principle, the government bears the burden of proving that the detention of someone beyond the person’s State-law release date does not violate the Fourth Amendment and its Maryland counterpart,” he wrote in the memo.
ICE removed or returned 240,255 individuals last fiscal year, including 174,923 apprehended while entering or shortly after entering the country, according to the agency. ICE wrote that the “vast majority” of the remaining 65,332 apprehended inside the U.S. were convicted criminals.
ICE submits detainers to local law enforcement agencies to allow individuals subject to removal from the country to be transferred to the federal agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security. A spokesman for ICE wrote that a “transfer of custody that takes place inside the secure confines of a jail or prison is safer for everyone involved, including our officers and the person being arrested.”