Jazz Shaw:
The criminal who shot multiple California sheriff’s deputies on Friday, killing two, originally told authorities that he was Marcelo Marquez of Salt Lake City. Fingerprint analysis has since revealed that his actual name is Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte, and he already has a lengthy history with ICE.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said that the fingerprints of the suspected shooter match those of a man named Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte. Monroy-Bracamonte was initially deported to Mexico in 1997 after being convicted of dug possession in Arizona. Four years later, he was arrested and deported again for an unspecified offense.
“The fingerprints were the basis for our request for an immigration detainer,” ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice told The Associated Press. The detainer requests that local authorities transfer him to federal custody after his case is adjudicated so ICE can purse his deportation, Kice said.
Under his assumed name, Monroy-Bracamonte had only run up a modest record of less than a dozen speeding tickets and other traffic offenses, along with visits from a couple of debt collectors. That’s quite a step up to go from there to multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and carjacking. The details of the killings are both chilling and already widely reported, so there’s no need to go over them again here. Assuming that a conviction is obtained, this guy should have a lot more to be worried about than deportation.
But the case of Monroy-Bracamonte is yet another reminder of a larger problem with no obvious solution. It seems that even after having been identified by immigration officials and actually apprehended and deported twice, he was able to return through the revolving door. And having done so, he could get a license, a vehicle, various odd jobs, and the freedom to continue moving around across at least two states and continue conducting whatever “business” it was that he was up to when he crossed paths with the sheriffs. Whatever that business was, I highly doubt it was limited to things such as traffic tickets or he wouldn’t have reacted this violently when confronted by the law.