Internal emails from within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reveal that the acting director went out of his way to block the deportation of an illegal alien with a criminal record after a request was made by a far-left “Abolish ICE” activist, as reported by Fox News.
The request was made by Tania Mattos, who serves as a policy director with the far-left pro-amnesty group Freedom for Immigrants. Mattos was an illegal alien herself before being granted amnesty by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and has publicly called for the abolition of ICE.
Mattos sent an email on June 7th to Angela Kelley, a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, demanding a stay of deportation for Marvin Jerezano-Pena, who was facing deportation. Pena had been arrested in 2015 for “robbery and simple assault,” and was convicted in 2016 for knowingly receiving stolen property. He was arrested again in 2019 for violation of his parole and a subsequent failure to report to authorities, and has also been arrested in the past for drug possession. As a result of his extensive criminal history, a judge ordered Pena to be deported back to Mexico in 2020.
In her email, Mattos claimed that Pena should not be deported because he was a recipient of DACA as well, and has married an American woman and had a 2-year-old son with her. She said that his deportation would be an “example of how many immigrants who interact with the criminal justice system are separated from their families unfairly.”
Kelley forwarded the email to ICE chief of staff Timothy Perry, who requested and received a report on Pena’s criminal record. After viewing his long list of crimes and arrests, Perry emailed Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson about the subject, and Johnson subsequently asked for “a 14 day stay of removal on this case to provide time to gather additional details.”
When asked about the contents of the email by Fox, ICE released a statement claiming that the entire episode was routine, and that “as a professional law enforcement agency, ICE has always considered requests, views, and opinions from all stakeholders,” and “routinely works alongside local law enforcement agencies, community organizations, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders to carry out its mission of safety and security.”
ICE then confirmed that Pena is still in the United States, and is currently being held in a detention facility in New York.