Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a detainer for a 20-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, who was enrolled in a high school in Montgomery County, Maryland and has now been charged with raping an 11-year-old girl off-campus sometime last year.
Likewise, another migrant, this one a 19-year-old Honduran man also attending school in Montgomery County, has been charged with also raping an 11-year-old girl in a separate incident.
WJLA reports that 20-year-old Jonathan Coreas-Salamanca was enrolled as a high school student at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, where he was arrested two weeks ago for allegedly having a repeated sexual affair with an 11-year-old girl. Police say the victim’s father found graphic text messages on a phone Coreas-Salamanca had secretly provided to his daughter describing the encounters and giving her tips on how she could improve her sexual performance.
In a separate incident, authorities also arrested 19-year-old Ivan Reyes Lopez on Feb. 19, charging him with reportedly luring an 11-year-old girl from a park to his family’s apartment in Silver Spring, where police say he forcibly raped her. Lopez didn’t deny the encounter, but did tell police the incident between him and the child was “consensual,” WJLA reports.
ICE confirmed to WJLA that Coreas-Salamanca was in the country illegally and has been issued an ICE detainer. The report didn’t give explicit details as to Lopez’s legal status in the United States, but did say he had emigrated from Honduras three years ago and used a Spanish-speaking translator in court.
According to court documents, Coreas-Salamanca had been living along the 7700 block of 25th Avenue in Adelphi, Md. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Salvadoran national is living in the U.S. illegally. The federal law enforcement agency has filed an immigration detainer with the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation.
Court documents state Lopez emigrated from Honduras nearly three years ago. He had been living in an apartment with his uncle along the 8800 block of Lanier Drive in Silver Spring.
Lopez's recent arrival to the United States as a teenager, as well as the fact that he was living with a family member at the time of his arrest, suggest he may have come to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor.
A spokesperson for the Montgomery County School District, seated in a county known for being a sanctuary for illegal aliens, dismissed public concerns that the 19- and 20-year-old men were enrolled as high school students.
"There is no data suggesting that being a high school student at 19, 20, or 21 makes a person more or less likely to commit a crime," spokeswoman Gboyinde Onijala wrote in an email to 7 On Your Side. "Any suggestion otherwise is wrong and trying to make a connection there to students enrolled in our district is wrong."
Jennifer Gross, a Montgomery County resident and mother, disagreed, saying she’s concerned that adult men are being placed in public schools with children as young as 13.
“Will they be allowed to return to the classroom? Will they be allowed to be back in general education public high school?" Gross asked. “These are adult men. They are over the age of 18 and simply because you’re enrolled in MCPS schools — or any other school system — does not change the fact that you’re legally an adult.”
Coreas-Salamanca faces up to 55 years in prison for his repeated encounters with a minor, while Lopez faces 20 years for a single rape charge.