Convicted Felon Immigrant Who Should Have Been Deported Charged In Stabbing Death
An immigrant who reportedly should have been deported to Haiti after serving time in a U.S. jail for a felony conviction now faces a murder charge.
The suspect, who served 17 years in a Connecticut prison on the attempted murder sentence, allegedly stabbed a woman, age 25, to death on June 15 in nearby Norwich and stuffed the body in a closet in her apartment. Local police originally arrested the suspect on a drug charge.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a deportation detainer in his file, but ICE agents apparently never picked him up in January when he got out of state jail.
The suspect is now being held on $1 million bail in a state jail and is due back in New London Superior Court in August.
“Federal immigration officials said they had been trying to deport accused Norwich killer Jean Jacques since 2002, while he was in prison but were unable to send Jacques back to Haiti because the 40-year-old convicted felon could not produce identity documents to establish his citizenship there,” the Norwich Bulletin reported.
Members of the Connecticut Congressional delegation are demanding an explanation from the Homeland Security Secretary as to what happened in this case.
“If that guy got deported like he should have been, I wouldn’t be going through this horrendous pain I’m in right now,” said Wendy Hartling, the heartbroken mother of victim Casey Chadwick. “My daughter should be with me right now.”
News outlets are somewhat vague as to whether the non-U.S. citizen suspect is a legal or illegal immigrant, but various blogs have suggested he is in the latter category.
In this particular instance, Connecticut prison officials are pointing the finger at the feds. “He was released to ICE. ICE had a detainer, so he was released to them. Correction has no control over his release or whether he was deported. He was managed according to parole conditions set by the Board of Pardons and Parole,” a corrections department representative claimed.
“We have a victim of a homicide in the meantime, and it’s a shame,” commented Norwich Police Chief Louis J. Fusaro Sr. “It’s pretty obvious if he was deported, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Separately, in a case that made national headlines, a five-time deported illegal alien gunned down Kate Steinle, 32, in an apparent random shooting on the San Francisco Pier 14 Embarcadero waterfront, a popular tourist destination, as she was walking with her father on July 1. In April, the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department released the suspect in the Steinle shooting from jail instead of turning him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for likely deportation number six.
San Francisco is a sanctuary city that is non-compliant with ICE detainers, which are notices to state officials to temporarily hold an illegal alien until federal officials can take custody.
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