U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested an unlawfully present Mexican national Monday who is a registered sex offender in Orange County, North Carolina, after the county refused to honor an ICE detainer and instead released him from local custody in June without any notification to ICE. Orange County’s refusal to honor ICE’s detainer, or to even notify the agency that it was releasing a convicted sex offender, allowed the subject to pose a public safety threat to North Carolina residents for nearly a month until his capture Monday.
Udiel Aguilar-Castellanos, an unlawfully present Mexican national subject to a final order of removal issued by a federal immigration judge in January 2015, was arrested at his Carrboro, North Carolina, residence Monday morning by a Raleigh-based ICE Fugitive Operations Team.
Mr. Aguilar-Castellanos pleaded guilty June 27 in Orange County to two counts of sexual battery and was required to register as a sex offender as part of his plea agreement. His victim is a pre-teen minor female. That same day, Orange County authorities released him from local custody without notifying ICE – ignoring an immigration detainer filed by ICE in September 2017 when Aguilar-Castellanos was initially charged.
While ICE attempted to keep track of Mr. Aguilar-Castellanos’s case, local officials did not provide the agency with updates and ICE was therefore unaware of his June 27 release from Orange County custody until he registered with Orange County as a sex offender July 11, which immediately prompted ICE to begin efforts to locate him in the community. Those efforts culminated in the arrest of Mr. Aguilar-Castellanos at his Carrboro residence early Monday.
After remaining an immigration fugitive for more than two years, Mr. Aguilar-Castellanos is now in ICE custody pending his removal from the U.S.
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-locates-arrests-sex-offender-after-nc-county-refuses-honor-detainer” target=”_blank”]