One in every 10 inmates held in the Harris County Jail in Texas has a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold, according to a Fox News open records request.
An ICE hold, or detainer, is a notice to local law enforcement that ICE intends to take the person into custody. The hold also requests information from local officials on when the suspect will be released, and asks officers to hold the suspect for up to 48 hours so that ICE may assume custody.
Currently, there are 9,527 inmates in the Harris County Jail, and 1,170 of those inmates have ICE holds, all of them costing taxpayers as their cases go through the court system.
Fox News records reveal that, as of September, there are 174 ICE detainers linked to sexual assault cases, more than half involving children under 14.
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Forty-three percent of cases with ICE holds involve violent crimes as classified by the FBI.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters on July 6, 2018, in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Among them are 75 murder cases, 22 of them capital murder.
This includes the two illegal migrants from Venezuela charged with capital murder, sexual assault and kidnapping in the death of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, whose mother has been vocal about blaming the Biden-Harris open border policy.
Osman Estanly Solorzano Sanchez, 32, is another suspect among these cases. According to ICE officials, Sanchez is an illegal migrant from Honduras.
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Sanchez is accused of killing 27-year-old Ricardo Vega, a father of two, during a road rage incident in April. According to police, Vega called 911 before he was shot, informing dispatchers he was following a road rage suspect who was armed with a gun, and gave his license and car description.
The Harris County Jail on the banks of Buffalo Bayou on March 20, 2019, in Houston. (Brett Comer/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Fox News spoke to his mother Victoria Garcia, who shared a photo of her son that she saved in her phone as his contact image – capturing him in a backwards hat and smiling. “It’s a call I will never receive again,” she said.
“He has a 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son who now have to grow up without a dad,” Garcia said. “And my daughter-in-law has to be without her husband.”
Garcia, a Mexican American whose parents immigrated to the United States, said she understands the importance of immigration and the pursuit of a better life.
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“I get it, you know,” Garcia said. “But they need to know who they’re allowing to come into our country, our country that we work every day for, that we pay taxes for. I didn’t ask for this. Ricardo didn’t ask to be killed. I didn’t ask for my son to be murdered. It’s a decision that Osman, an illegal from Honduras, that decided to take upon himself.”
An ICE agent monitors hundreds of asylum seekers being processed upon entering the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on June 6, 2023, in New York City. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Garcia says her son loved to cook and fish and had an infectious smile that would light up a room. She vows not to give up as the case goes through the legal system.
“Ricardo isn’t here to fight his fight,” Garcia says. “But his mom is. I don’t want Ricardo’s case to be another road rage in Houston. I don’t want Ricardo’s case to be swept under the rug. I am going to fight for Ricardo.”
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While the Harris County Sheriff’s Office responded to the open records request, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office and Travis County Sheriff’s Office in Austin denied the same records request and sent it to the Attorney General’s Office.
