On Feb. 8, 2-year-old Jeremy Poou Caceres was walking with his mother in Langley Park, Maryland, when several men in a carjacked SUV pulled up nearby and started shooting.
Jeremy was accidentally killed in the crossfire, and his mother, whom local media reports have not identified by name, was wounded, according to WUSA-TV.
Now, one of the five suspects in the shooting has been identified by federal authorities as an illegal alien who had previously been arrested and released by Montgomery County officials despite multiple requests that he be turned over to federal custody for deportation.
James Covington, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations Baltimore, told Washington, D.C.’s WTTG that 25-year-old Nilson Trejo-Granados was a Salvadoran national who was in the country illegally.
Montgomery County officials had multiple opportunities to do the right the thing — and incidentally, their jobs — by turning Trejo-Granados over to ICE for the deportation that had been ordered by a Department of Justice immigration judge on Nov. 7, 2022.
They refused to do that, and now a young child is dead and his mother injured.
The Montgomery County Police Department arrested Trejo-Granados for theft on March 21, 2023, according to ICE records reviewed by WTTG.
The Montgomery County Detention Center refused to honor the immigration detainer filed with it the following day, and released the suspect on March 27.
Six months later, officers with the same law enforcement agency again took Trejo-Granados into custody on Sept. 26, again for theft, but this time with additional charges of hindering the officers and attempting to obstruct.
Should authorities who release illegal immigrants against the wishes of ICE be held accountable?
Yes: 98% (103 Votes)
No: 2% (2 Votes)
Another immigration detainer arrived, again on the day after the arrest — honestly, I don’t know why ICE even bothered — and it was again ignored. Trejo-Granados hit the streets again on Oct. 12.
This time, Trejo-Granados was arrested Thursday and charged with first- and second-degree murder, and, you guessed it, ICE filed a detainer the following day.
Trejo-Granados became the fifth suspect arrested in the shooting death; four others were already in custody, including a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old, both of whom were charged as adults.
The five men stand accused of stealing a vehicle and traveling in it to the scene of the shooting. Trejo-Granados is the only one of the five who was reportedly in the country illegally.
The other group involved in the shooting has apparently not yet been identified, and a $25,000 reward has been offered for anyone who has information that would lead to the arrest of other suspects.
It is possible, of course, that had Trejo-Granados been deported last year as he should have been — twice — this shooting would have occurred in a very similar manner to the way in which it did. Perhaps the other four would have continued on without him.
On the other hand, what if Trejo-Granados hadn’t been around? How might the lives of Jeremy Poou Caceres and his mother have been different if Montgomery County officials had actually done their job to protect the citizens for whom they supposedly work?
There’s no way to know, of course, and that kind of speculation can drive a person mad.
But I do know this: Every person responsible for the release of Nilson Trejo-Granados despite the ICE requests for his detainment is, to my mind, an unindicted co-conspirator in the murder of a 2-year-old child.
And if I were Jeremy’s mother, I’d be suing the pants off of Montgomery County and every individual I could find who had anything to do with the release of this criminal back onto the streets.
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George Upper is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Western Journal and was a weekly co-host of “WJ Live,” powered by The Western Journal. He is currently a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. A former U.S. Army special operator, teacher and consultant, he is a lifetime member of the NRA and an active volunteer leader in his church. Born in Foxborough, Massachusetts, he has lived most of his life in central North Carolina.
George Upper, is the former editor-in-chief of The Western Journal and is now a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. He currently serves as the connections pastor at Awestruck Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is a former U.S. Army special operator, teacher, manager and consultant. Born in Massachusetts, he graduated from Foxborough High School before joining the Army and spending most of the next three years at Fort Bragg. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English as well as a Master’s in Business Administration, all from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He and his wife life only a short drive from his three children, their spouses and his grandchildren. He is a lifetime member of the NRA and in his spare time he shoots, reads a lot of Lawrence Block and John D. MacDonald, and watches Bruce Campbell movies. He is a fan of individual freedom, Tommy Bahama, fine-point G-2 pens and the Oxford comma.
