ERO New Orleans places detainer on twice-removed, twice-charged homicide suspect
NEW ORLEANS — Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) New Orleans placed an immigration detainer on a twice-removed unlawfully present Honduran citizen arrested for homicide in Nashville.
Kevin Castro Garcia, 31, was arrested Oct. 10 and booked into the Davidson County Jail by the Nashville Metro Police Department on criminal homicide charges for the death and burning of a 37-year-old man. On the same day, ERO New Orleans — which covers operations in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama — placed a detainer on Castro Garcia. Later the same week, Castro Garcia was charged with a second homicide of a 26-year-old South Nashville man who was reported missing by his mother earlier in the month.
“This unlawfully present Honduran national is a threat to the safety of our local communities. He is a gang member with Sur 13, a transnational criminal organization. ERO New Orleans will pursue all possible criminal and administrative avenues to see that he is prosecuted and removed from our local community,” said ERO New Orleans Field Office Director Mellissa Harper. “ERO has removed him twice from the United States and yet he continues to choose to violate our laws. Castro Garcia must answer for his continued disregard for the laws of this country.”
As part of its mission to identify and arrest removable noncitizens, ERO lodges immigration detainers against noncitizens who have been arrested for criminal activity and taken into custody by state or local law enforcement. An immigration detainer is a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to state or local law enforcement agencies to notify ICE as early as possible before a removable noncitizen is released from their custody. Detainers request that state or local law enforcement agencies maintain custody of the noncitizen for a period not to exceed 48 hours beyond the time the individual would otherwise be released, allowing ERO to assume custody for removal purposes in accordance with federal law.
Detainers are critical public safety tools because they focus enforcement resources on removable noncitizens who have been arrested for criminal activity. Detainers increase the safety of all parties involved — ERO personnel, law enforcement officials, removable noncitizens and the public — by allowing an arrest to be made in a secure and controlled custodial setting as opposed to at-large within the community. Since detainers result in the direct transfer of a noncitizen from state or local custody to ERO custody, they also minimize the potential that an individual will reoffend. Additionally, detainers conserve scarce government resources by allowing ERO to take criminal noncitizens into custody directly rather than expending resources locating these individuals at-large.
Castro Garcia remains in custody at the Davidson County Jail pending the outcome of his state criminal proceedings.
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