Illegal immigrant's deadly crash not a 'crime of violence,' ICE says

An illegal immigrant -- who police said was drunk while street racing when he killed a Nebraska woman in a car crash -- wasn’t detained by immigration officials because his offense did “not constitute a crime of violence,” the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said in a March letter to Congress.

Edwin Mejia, 19, is accused of being drunk and driving recklessly when his vehicle slammed into 21-year-old Sarah Root’s car in January.

Root died at the hospital. Mejia later posted bond and fled. He’s been added to ICE’s “Most Wanted” list.

“Mr. Mejia should not need to be on this list – he should be in jail,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a March 30 statement. “ICE originally said that Mr. Mejia was not an ‘enforcement priority,’ but this morning he was placed on their Most Wanted list. The public still does not have a complete account of what went wrong.”

Border agents first encountered Mejia in May 2013 when the 16-year-old arrived in Nogales, Ariz., from Honduras and was designated as an unaccompanied child.

More