Mexican accused of rape was deported and expelled 19 times

WICHITA, Kansas (AP) — A Mexican man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus through Kansas has been deported 10 times and voluntarily expelled from the U.S. nine times since 2003, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Three Republican U.S. senators – including Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts of Kansas – this month demanded that the Department of Homeland Security release the immigration records of Tomas Martinez-Maldonado, 38, who is charged with allegedly robbing a Geary County bus on Sept. 27. He is being held at the Geary County Jail in Junction City, about 120 miles west of Kansas City.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, co-signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on December 9, along with Moran and Roberts, calling the case “extremely disturbing” and questioning how Martinez-Maldonado was able to re-enter the country and remain there.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had issued a warrant for Geary County – a request to turn Martinez-Maldonado over to immigration custody before he could be released. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to discuss his specific case beyond its October statement on the 10 deportations.

Court records show that Martinez-Maldonado was convicted of entering a building without lawful permission in two cases heard in U.S. District Court for Arizona in 2013 and 2015. He was sentenced to 60 and 165 days in jail, respectively.

A status hearing on the rape case is scheduled for Jan. 10. Defense attorney Lisa Hamer declined to comment on the charges, but said, “Criminal law and immigration definitely overlap, and these days it should be the responsibility of every criminal defense attorney to know the potential consequences in immigration court.”

According to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 52 percent of all criminal prosecutions nationwide last fiscal year involved entry or re-entry without a permit and similar immigration violations.

It’s not unusual for immigrants to enter the country multiple times without legal permission, said David Trevino, a Topeka-based immigration attorney who has been providing legal advice to Martinez-Maldonado’s family. Most of Martinez-Maldonado’s relatives live in Mexico, but he also has relatives in the U.S., and the family is “devastated,” Trevino said.

“(President-elect Donald Trump) can build a wall 100 feet high and 50 feet deep, but it will not separate family members. So if someone is deported and they have family members here, … they will find a way back – whether it’s through the air, under a wall or across the coast of the United States,” Trevino said.

He declined to comment on Martinez-Maldonado’s criminal past and pending charges.

Records obtained by AP show that Martinez-Maldonado was voluntarily deported eight times before his first deportation in 2010. Another voluntary deportation followed that same year. He was deported five more times between 2011 and 2013.

In 2013, Martinez-Maldonado was charged with entering a country without permission, a misdemeanor, and deported in early 2014 after serving his sentence. He was deported again a few months later, and twice in 2015 – most recently in October 2015, after serving his second sentence, records show.

In an emailed statement, ICE said it routinely refers cases in which it encounters individuals who have been deported multiple times or who have significant criminal histories and have been deported to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible prosecution.

Cosme Lopez, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, declined to comment on why prosecutors twice dropped re-entry charges against Martinez-Maldonado on aggravated deportation in 2013 and 2015 in exchange for a guilty plea on the minor entry charge.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse records show that Arizona ranked third in the nation in the number of immigration prosecutions for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 — behind only the Southern District of Texas and the Western District of Texas — among the country’s 94 federal judicial districts.

Moran told the AP in an email that the immigration system is “broken.”

“Serious legislative efforts are needed to change U.S. immigration policy, and we must be able to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants with violent tendencies before they have the opportunity to commit such crimes in the United States,” he said.

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This version of the story corrects Trevino’s relationship with Martinez-Maldonado.