ICE Slaps Detainer Request On Salvadoran Migrant Accused Of Rape In Montgomery County

• ICE has placed a detainer on Josue Gomez-Gonzalez, a Honduran national, after he was charged with raping an intoxicated woman in his home. 
• The arrest follows a string of rapes by illegal aliens in Montgomery County, Maryland, igniting national criticism over the county’s recently-signed “sanctuary” law that prohibits cooperation with ICE. 
• ICE and immigration experts have publicly blasted Montgomery County for enforcing policies that, they argue, protect criminal illegal aliens.

An immigrant from El Salvador has been charged in Montgomery County, Maryland, for rape, marking the latest foreign national to be charged with rape or other sexual crime in the county in recent time.

Josue Gomez-Gonzalez, a 23-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, is accused of raping a woman earlier in September, according to court documents first publicized by ABC 7 News. The victim is reportedly someone Gomez-Gonzalez knew for “a few years,” but she claims their relationship was never romantic in nature.

The incident occurred on the night of September 10, according to court documents. Gomez-Gonzalez picked the woman up to go to dinner. Afterward, the two wanted to drink some alcohol, so they went to a liquor store and purchased a “medium sized bottle of Hennessy” and drove to an unknown parking lot in Montgomery County, Maryland. The two consumed the entire bottle throughout the course of the evening.

At a certain point in the night, the victim began to feel tired and wanted to go to sleep. Gomez-Gonzalez wanted to keep her awake, and then allegedly began to start kissing her and tried to pull down her leggings. The victim, who blacked out during moments of the night, recalls Gomez-Gonzalez helping her into his house in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

The victim alleges that he then took his clothes off and kissed her as she tried to fight back, and he later “forced vaginal intercourse.” The following morning, she woke up and experienced “intense” vaginal pain, and noticed she was bleeding out of her vagina when she used the restroom. She immediacy called law enforcement and consented to a rape kit.

In a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that it lodged a detainer request for Gomez-Gonzalez after he was arrested.

“Josue A. Gomez-Gonzalez, a native of El Salvador, is the subject of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer lodged with the Montgomery County Detention Center, Md., on Sept. 12, after his arrest for rape,” the agency said in a Tuesday statement.

However, ICE did not confirm with TheDCNF whether Gomez-Gonzalez is living in the U.S. illegally. While federal immigration authorities lodge detainer requests to local jails in order to catch illegal aliens, lawfully-present foreign nationals can also be subject to deportation if they are convicted of heinous crimes.

The latest arrest will also showcase how Montgomery County’s government will cooperate with ICE in the face of yet another rape charge against a foreign national. A Montgomery County district court judge has granted Gomez-Gonzales a $100,000 bond. If he is able to post bond, jailers are expected to alert ICE of impending release from custody.

Montgomery County has received national media attention for a slate of rape and sexual crime allegations against illegal aliens, all of them after County Executive Marc Elrich signed a “sanctuary” executive order that largely prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE agents.

Even while Elrich has agreed to notify ICE when an illegal alien is leaving its the county’s custody, Montgomery officials will still not honor detainer requests, which ask that detention centers hold onto individuals for another 48 hours, giving federal authorities time to reach detention centers in time. 

So far, at least eight illegal aliens have been accused of rape or other sexual crime in Montgomery County since July 25.

Gomez-Gonzalez’s arrest follows that of Wilder Hernandez-Nolasco, a 21-year-old from Honduras who was recently arrested for allegedly raping a six-year-old girl repeatedly. He allegedly told the young child that he would ground her for “100 days” if she told anyone about the rapes.