An illegal Ecuadorean immigrant who was twice jailed for molesting a child — only to be released by authorities in Connecticut — is finally in ICE custody, immigration officials said.
The pervy migrant was picked up by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Hartford last week, more than four years after he was first busted on charges of assault with risk to a child, the federal agency said in a press release on Wednesday.
“This convicted sex offender presented a significant threat to the children of our Connecticut communities,” said Todd Lyons, director of the Boston field office for US Enforcement and Removal Operations. “This individual should never have been released back on the streets.
“Thanks to the hard work of our officers in Hartford, he was removed from the community and no longer poses a threat to our residents,” Lyons said.
The native of Ecuador, whose name was not released by the feds, entered the country illegally by crossing the US border with Mexico and into Texas in May 2015, but was released by an immigration judge three months later, ICE officials said.
On March 13, 2020, he was picked up by cops in Danbury on the child sex assault case.
Three days later officials in the Boston office of US Enforcement and Removal Operations lodged an immigration detainer to get their hands on the migrant.
He was convicted of the child sex charges on April 13, 2021, and sentenced to five years in prison on Jan. 13, 2022 —only to have the sentence reduced to five years of probation.
But ICE was never notified and the migrant was in the wind, the agency said.
He was arrested again in Danbury on May 6, 2023, on assault and probation violation charges.
The migrant was again convicted and sentenced to one year behind bars — which was again reduced to probation.
Once more he was released with Connecticut officials who allegedly ignored an ICE detainer.
However, federal immigration agents with the Boston ERO office finally caught up with him in Hartford last week — and is now awaiting a custody hearing before a Department of Justice immigration judge.
Hartford is one of several Connecticut cities that declared itself a “sanctuary city” that does not fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities to hold or detain misbehaving migrants for ICE.