ERO Baltimore arrests MS-13 member convicted of illegal firearm possession

BALTIMORE — Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Baltimore apprehended an undocumented Salvadoran noncitizen convicted of illegally possessing an unregistered firearm. Deportation officers from ERO Baltimore’s Criminal Apprehension Program arrested the 24-year-old member of the notorious MS-13 street gang Jan. 10 at his residence in Silver Spring.

The Salvadoran noncitizen unlawfully entered the United States and the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended him in June 2014 in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, as an unaccompanied noncitizen child. Authorities served him with a notice to appear before a Department of Justice immigration judge as a noncitizen present without admission or parole. Later that month, U.S. Border Patrol transferred custody of the noncitizen to ERO El Paso, which transferred him to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at Fort Sill, a U.S. Army installation in Lawton, Oklahoma.

In July 2014, the Office of Refugee Resettlement released him into his mother’s custody in Rockville, Maryland.

A Department of Justice immigration judge ordered his removal from the United States to El Salvador in August 2014, after he failed to appear for his hearing.

The Montgomery County Police Department arrested the Salvadoran noncitizen in November 2016 and charged him with a variety of assault and weapons charges. The District Court for Montgomery County remanded the charges in juvenile court. On March 7, 2017, the HSI San Antonio field office in Falcon Heights, Texas, confirmed that the Salvadoran noncitizen was an associate of the MS-13 street gang.

The Montgomery County Police Department arrested him in January 2022 and charged him with firearms-related charges, including illegal possession.

The Circuit Court for Montgomery County convicted the noncitizen of illegally possessing a firearm in September 2022 and sentenced him to five years of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised probation. The court suspended four years of his imprisonment and dismissed the remaining charges.

Deportation officers from ERO Baltimore’s Criminal Apprehension Program arrested him Jan. 10 at his residence in Silver Spring. He will remain in ERO custody pending his removal from the United States.

ERO conducts removals of individuals without a lawful basis to remain in the United States, including at the order of immigration judges with the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). EOIR is a separate entity from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Immigration judges in these courts make decisions based on the merits of each individual case, determining if a noncitizen is subject to a final order of removal or eligible for certain forms of relief from removal.

As one of ICE’s three operational directorates, ERO is the principal federal law enforcement authority in charge of domestic immigration enforcement. ERO’s mission is to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of those who undermine the safety of U.S. communities and the integrity of U.S. immigration laws, and its primary areas of focus are interior enforcement operations, management of the agency’s detained and non-detained populations, and repatriation of noncitizens who have received final orders of removal. ERO’s workforce consists of more than 7,700 law enforcement and non-law enforcement support personnel across 25 domestic field offices and 208 locations nationwide, 30 overseas postings, and multiple temporary duty travel assignments along the border.