Cuban National Taken Into ICE Custody in New Mexico Following Fuel Fraud Arrest

Federal immigration agents detained a Cuban man in Albuquerque after local jail officials freed him despite a federal hold request tied to charges of stealing fuel with cloned payment cards.

Cuban National Taken Into ICE Custody in New Mexico Following Fuel Fraud Arrest

Federal immigration agents apprehended a Cuban man on the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, after the local detention center let him go instead of keeping him for ICE.

Reinier Rodríguez Hernández was first picked up by city police along with a second man, Amaury Morán Martínez, as part of a probe into the theft of gasoline and diesel using duplicated credit cards. Officers booked him on multiple counts of payment-card fraud and a theft charge.

After that arrest, the federal agency lodged a detainer with the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, asking the jail to hold him for transfer. The facility, described by ICE as the sole sanctuary jurisdiction in the state, ignored the request and released him when his local case finished.

ICE then dispatched its fugitive-operations unit to locate him in the community. Agents found him in public and placed him under arrest. The agency later circulated photographs of the operation on social media as a cautionary signal.

Rodríguez Hernández had earlier crossed into the country without papers near Del Rio, Texas. He now sits in immigration detention while criminal and removal proceedings continue, and expulsion from the United States remains a possible result.

Reported by Cuballama

Source: Google News CU — Crime