California releases child murderer back onto the streets in defiance of ICE orders

Police in California have released a convicted child murderer back onto the streets of Los Angeles despite having been directed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to keep the killer detained, the agency said Monday in a press release.

Carlos Morales-Ramirez, 44, was convicted in 1998 by a Los Angeles court of "second-degree murder, assault on a child causing death, and great bodily injury to a child causing death."

For nearly 23 years, Morales-Ramirez was held in the Pleasant Valley Prison in Chowchilla, California for the murder. Despite ICE lodging an immigration detainer order in 2013, the Californian law enforcement authorities released the child killer back into the community on Dec 4.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Los Angeles Field Office Director Dave Marin condemned the actions of the Californian authorities, saying in a statement that "rather than working with our officers to ensure this convicted aggravated felon was safely handed over to ICE, he was released back into the community and our officers were forced to exhaust more time and resources relocating and re-arresting him."

He noted that despite Californian sanctuary laws, the state has the ability to cooperate with ICE in "instances where serious or violent crimes have been committed."

"[Again], we are talking about the murder of a child," Marin pleaded.

Morales-Ramirez was arrested six days later on Dec. 10 and is in ICE custody while awaiting the results of his removal proceedings.

"California's sanctuary policies continue to fail residents by allowing convicted criminals like Morales-Ramirez to walk free–state officials and advocates need to take a hard look at the reality, and potential consequences, of these misguided laws that leave potential victims wildly unprotected from very egregious criminal offenders," Marin stated.

ICE cited another recent example of the Californian authorities siding with criminals over ICE officers, pointing to the case of Fernando De Jesus Lopez-Garcia.

Lopez-Garcia is a convicted criminal with "convictions for battery of a spouse, assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, battery of an officer, and vandalism" who ICE ordered to be transferred into their custody.

Instead, Lopez-Garcia was released from Santa Clara County Jail in June of this year and went on to commit a double homicide in November.

It is unlikely that such patterns in Los Angeles are going to change, as the city just elected George Gascón as their District Attorney. Gascón, upon election, announced that he would work towards a number of radical left-wing policies such as "eliminating cash bail, declining prosecution for several misdemeanor crimes and preventing prosecutors from seeking enhanced prison sentences."

Gascón is also working towards a reduced sentence, flatly rejecting life in prison or the death penalty, for accused cop-killer Rhett Nelson. Nelson was accused of murdering Los Angeles Police Department deputy Joseph Solano by gunshot to the back of the head at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Los Angeles. Solano's sister made an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight where she blasted the new LA District Attorney.

"He killed two people, my brother and another gentleman, and he gets to go free in 15-20 years?" Christina Solano lamented. "Come on, this is ridiculous."

LA County Attorney Brian Claypool also admonished Gascón for his soft-on-crime stance, calling it "an abuse of power at the most catastrophic level." Claypool said he would be launching a recall effort against the District Attorney, who has only held his new position for ten days.

Jon Hatami, a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney also criticized his superior. "A lot of [deputy district attorneys] are really scared. They are sending people to court to monitor what we say. They are working with the public defenders and alternate public defenders to intimidate us and document what we do and what we say," Hatami said. "I just don't understand why we're not trying to prosecute child murderers to the fullest extent of the law."

Gascón defended his stance on sentence enhancements, claiming he "eliminated sentence enhancements because sentence enhancements doesn't necessarily create more safety, in fact they often create more recidivism and they make us less safe."