In August 2012, a woman told Mesa police that she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in her apartment by two men and a woman.
The suspects, all three of whom had guns, made the woman strip naked, stole everything in her apartment and locked her inside a bedroom until she escaped through a window, the woman told police, according to court documents.
She identified one of the suspects as Apolinar Altamirano. He is the 29-year-old undocumented immigrant accused of gunning down a clerk at a QuikTrip store in Mesa last month while out on bond awaiting deportation proceedings.
Altamirano ended up pleading guilty to a felony burglary charge in connection with the 2012 incident. He was sentenced to two years' probation and then turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement because he was in the country illegally.
Now, questions are being raised over why ICE released Altamirano in the first place.
As a convicted felon, he was considered a high priority for deportation. And while he was out on bond, two orders of protection were filed against him, including one from a woman who said he threatened to kill her and pointed a gun at her boyfriend.
The killing has drawn outrage from critics who say Altamirano's release is part of a larger problem of ICE releasing tens of thousands of convicted criminals under President Barack Obama's immigration-enforcement policies.
U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., said he believes that if Altamirano "had stayed in custody," the store clerk "would still be alive."
ICE officials are acting under "a flawed policy coming from the administration," said Salmon, whose district includes Mesa. "I don't think it's an isolated instance. I think it's a pattern."
Added Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee: "It's a manifestation of the administration's failure to enforce the laws and deport people who come to this country illegally."
He added, "And so I wouldn't be surprised if you see more tragedies such as this one."
Conflicting policies at ICE
Obama's administration has been under intense pressure from immigrant-rights organizations to ease up on deportations after reaching record levels, with more than 2 million people deported since Obama took office.
As a result, ICE officers in the field have been directed to place the highest priority on deporting dangerous criminals and people who recently entered the country illegally, instead of undocumented immigrants with long ties to the U.S. who do not have criminal records.
But critics say the policies have created confusion. ICE officials have become more likely to release convicted criminals such as Altamirano rather than detaining them while they await deportation proceedings, the critics argue.
They point out that deportation cases of convicted criminals who are released from custody can drag on for years, as was the case of Altamirano. By contrast, the cases of those who remain in custody usually take only months to settle.
"Leaders have interfered so much and so frequently in the way (ICE officers in the field) go about their business that they jump at shadows now," said Dan Cadman, a former regional ICE official.
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"(They) understand that if they are supposed to err, they are supposed to err on the side of release and not incarceration," added Cadman, now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
"There is a public-safety cost to that."
In December, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was grilled by Republican lawmakers over the release of convicted criminals during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing.
The hearing was held to look at how Obama's recent executive actions on immigration, which will offer protection from deportation to some 4 million undocumented immigrants, will affect border security.
Johnson acknowledged a lack of consistency when ICE releases convicted criminals from custody and said he has directed ICE officials in the field not to release them without higher approval.
He told lawmakers that about 36,000 convicted criminals were released by ICE in fiscal 2013, and about 30,000 in fiscal 2014, which ended in September.
"I want to know that we're applying a consistent standard to those circumstances, because they may jeopardize public safety," Johnson told lawmakers. He said he also directed ICE officials not to release convicted criminals because of fiscal constraints.
"We will find the way to pay for it if we believe somebody should not be released for reasons of public safety," Johnson said.
Suspect's history
Altamirano was taken into custody by ICE on Jan. 3, 2013, after he pleaded guilty to facilitation to commit burglary in the second degree, a Class 6 felony, the lowest level.
He was released four days later, on Jan. 7, after he posted a $10,000 bond pending the outcome of his removal proceedings in immigration court.
The "high bond" was intended to make sure Altamirano showed up for his hearings, according to an ICE official who agreed to speak to The Arizona Republic on condition of anonymity.
The ICE official confirmed, however, that Altamirano was released without supervision, and as a result, he was not required to wear a monitoring device or to report regularly to ICE officials.
The official also acknowledged that ICE was not aware of two orders of protection issued against Altamirano while he was free on bond.
If they had been, ICE would have considered taking him back into custody, the official said.
The latest order was served on Altamirano on Jan. 19, three days before police accuse him of shooting Grant Ronnebeck at a QuikTrip store in Mesa over a pack of cigarettes.
The woman who filed the complaint in Mesa Municipal Court wrote that Altamirano had threatened to kill her "plenty of times" and pointed a gun at her boyfriend, according to court records.
"I fear for my life," the woman wrote.
Altamirano also was barred by a court order from entering the same QuikTrip two weeks before the killing.
The ICE official said the agency has limited resources to detain immigrants and maintained that Altamirano was eligible for bond under the law because a review of his criminal history showed only the burglary conviction. Court records show he came to the U.S. when he was 14.
ICE officials in reviewing Altamirano's criminal background also noted that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office had allowed him to plead down to a burglary charge deemed "non-violent." Prosecutors also "did not deem Altamirano a sufficient enough public-safety threat to impose any prison time," the ICE official said.
"So, obviously, those were two circumstances that factored into our decision to allow him to be released on bond," the ICE official said.
Varying outcomes
Critics, however, say ICE made a mistake in releasing Altamirano.
"These sounds like excuses more than explanations," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which pushes for more immigration enforcement.
According to ICE's deportation priorities, Altamirano's felony burglary conviction "would make him a Level 2 offender, which is a reasonably high priority for deportation," Vaughan said.
"Given the circumstances of this case, it's just as possible to read it differently in a way that suggests he really should have been kept in custody and he really should have been put on the fast track for deportation," she said.
According to court documents, the woman told police that Altamirano and the two others who came to her apartment in 2012 were associates of her boyfriend, who had been arrested two days earlier on drug charges.
The woman told police the three had guns and made her strip naked to "ensure she was not wearing a wire," according to court documents.
The woman also said Altamirano sexually assaulted her, according to court documents.
She said the three suspects loaded all of the property in the apartment into a truck, took her at gunpoint to a house and kept her for seven days inside a bedroom padlocked from the outside. The suspects told her they were connected to the Mexican mafia and "had ties to Sinaloa," home to the Sinaloa drug cartel, she said, according to court records.
The woman said she was a heroin addict and the suspects gave her drugs while she was being held to "keep her calm," according to court documents.
She said she escaped through a window but waited several days to contact police because she was scared.
Altamirano was initially charged with burglary in the second degree and theft, both Class 3 felonies, according to court records. He was not charged with sexual assault.
He denied taking any property from the victim, touching her in any way or holding her against her will. He told police he was only trying to help the woman by moving her property, according to court records.
The charges of second-degree burglary and theft were dropped when Altamirano pleaded guilty to the reduced burglary charge, according to court records.
Even so, "the underlying facts and circumstances and the initial charges" leveled against Altamirano suggest he was "not likely to be a good candidate" for release on bond, said Cadman, the former ICE official.
"In a case like this, it makes no sense at all, none," Cadman said.
Vaughan said releasing Altamirano without supervision was also a mistake.
"It's more likely that they would find out about" the orders of protection against Altamirano "if he was under order of supervision," she said.
Altamirano, meanwhile, is now facing charges of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and armed robbery in the killing of Ronnebeck.
Carlos Garcia, an organizer with Puente, a Phoenix-based immigrant-advocacy group, said Altamirano's release is an example of how ICE uses its discretion inconsistently.
He pointed out that among the millions of people ICE has deported were hundreds of undocumented workers caught using fake IDs in work-site raids conducted by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
"Our main concern is the discretion, the way that people are treated different: Some people with the same charge get to stay, and some people get deported," he said.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/mesa/2015/02/02/questions-surround-ice-release-suspect-qt-killing/22698455/?hootPostID=%5B%22%5B%2725d561a8332fac6455dc6270cdcd3a27%27%5D%22%5D
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