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| Henry Sanchez, 18, had an "active alien removal" case pending against him - but was allowed to enroll as a freshman(!!) at Rockville High School, where he is accused of raping a 14-year-old girl |
But beyond the always-controversial immigration issue, the rape incident has exposed two additional security flaws at Montgomery County Public Schools. First is the question people across America have been asking on social media since the rape story went viral Friday: How did a 17 and 18 year old manage to get enrolled as "freshmen" at Rockville High School? And, second, how could Rockville High School and MCPS not have a home address on-file for one of its students?
So far, MCPS is not revealing the details of how adults can enroll in regular 9th grade classes. Most illegal immigrants are working during school hours, so clearly neither of these gentlemen came here to work. Stunningly, MCPS and its bumbling superintendent were completely silent on a gang rape that occurred in their school four days ago until yesterday. But don't expect any answers, according to said-bumbling superintendent Jack Smith, who arrogantly wrote that "I know community members have many questions about this serious incident. To ensure we do not unintentionally prejudice an ongoing investigation, MCPS cannot provide any additional details about this specific case at this time." And we pay this guy's salary? There is no reference to the bathroom assault on the system's Twitter feed, even as parents have pressed for answers on social media all weekend.
Equally troubling is the fact that Rockville High School and MCPS could not provide Montgomery County police detectives with the home address of Jose Montano. The official police press release described Montano's residence as an "unconfirmed address." Yet a home address was readily available for Henry Sanchez, the 18-year-old illegal immigrant who has only been in the country for seven months.
How can you enroll at MCPS without a home address? How would they have confirmed Montano's identity? How would they know he lived in the Rockville High School cluster?
How many other students does MCPS not have a home address for? How many students are illegally attending schools outside of their actual school cluster, because MCPS is not verifying their home address? Is this part of an exceptional process that applies to undocumented immigrant students? Because I have a hard time believing that an actual legal resident living in Aspen Hill would be able to enroll at Walt Whitman High School without proof of a current address in the Whitman cluster area.
So many questions, for a school system already found to have extremely-lax cybersecurity (including personal student information), and - as we found during recent vandalism incidents - a lack of security cameras on its campuses.
So many questions about how this devastating crime was allowed to happen, yet none of them are being asked by the elected officials whose policies actually did allow this rape to occur - the Montgomery County Council. Constituents took County and Rockville City Council members to task for their silence, which was deafening this past weekend.
Just this morning, the Washington Post is reporting that MS-13 gang kingpins in El Salvador are sending additional gang members north, specifically to Montgomery County, with orders to increase the gang's power in our county. This is serious business, especially in a county where our political leaders have so far claimed we don't have a gang problem. And Montgomery County has now earned the dubious distinction of being the only jurisdiction in our area where two underage girls have been gang-raped by illegal immigrants in a single year. Last April, two illegal immigrants living at taxpayer expense in Montgomery County public housing in Wheaton were arrested for kidnapping and gang-raping a 12-year-old girl.
Both of these girls were let down by our elected officials, and our school system. It's a disgrace. Silence is not the answer.
Do you ever feel even a little but gross for what you do? Making this all about the larger immigration issue may serve what appears to be a nefarious or bigoted agenda, but it hardly provides much illumination on this issue. If you're so concerned about the victim in this case, perhaps you could focus on her ordeal, if there is anything that can be done to help her family, and what it is they must be going through. . . or, at the very least, keep that in mind when you sensationalize the hell out of her horrible nightmare while you use it to further your anti-immigrant agenda.
ReplyDeleteWhile you ask some very interesting questions here, some of which definitely will need to be addressed by public officials and the MCPD, it is clear why it is that you operate a blog and are not a reporter for a reputable news organization. For example, while the MCPD may initially report that one suspect had an "unconfirmed address," this is not the same thing as the school district not having an address on file for the individual. Reporting as much is either sloppy journalism, or part of an intentional effort to disparage an organization, its policies, or its employees. Furthermore, you consistently refer to individuals by their immigration statues, but rarely provide any documentation of this in your poorly cited diatribes. For example, you reporting on the horrible crimes committed by Carbajal and Tomes in April 2016, you link to your own report on the crime. In this posting, you indicate that the two perpetrators were "illegal immigrants living at taxpayer expense," but nowhere is this substantiated in your original post, which is completely without citation. In fact, your original post goes out of its way to mention that the men's immigration statues was unknown. Perhaps this is addressed in subsequent posts, but it's sloppy as hell not to include those in this one. In any case, I'm sure your proud of the work you're doing.
Also, no where do you (or, can you?) demonstrate how any proposed so-called sanctuary legislation would hinder county/state cooperation with federal ICE efforts in fighting the MS-13 gang activity. . . or has any bearing on this crime specifically. While I'm not privy to the specifics of the legislation in MoCo or Maryland generally, for the most part, these sanctuary bills do little to nothing to hinder cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement in combating organized crime or the apprehension and detention of undocumented criminals. Most similar legislation in other communities expressly includes language and policies indicating as much. What is more, these communities continue to demonstrate good-faith efforts in extending cooperation and assistance to ICE and other federal agencies when dealing with these cases and scenarios. For the most part, enacting a "sanctuary status" to a locality actually makes a community safer, as it ensures that otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants will report crimes, cooperate with authorities, and will feel safe in their person when interacting with public officials. This makes the rest of us safer, too, as it ensures that criminals and crimes will be addressed by the police and problems are not allowed to fester unmolested. You pretending otherwise in order to push a broader anti-immigrant agenda is disingenuous at best. Given what you probably don't know about this horrible crime, it's telling where it is you let your imagination lead you.
I don't have an anti-immigrant agenda. There's really no way to spin the facts out of this case - at least one of the men is confirmed to be an illegal immigrant, and every indication is that the other is, too. But they're withholding that information simply so it cannot be reported as "two illegal immigrants rape 14-year-old" Now, if I was withholding information from the public for political reasons when kids are at risk, yeah, that would be something to "feel gross" about.
DeleteThe 2 defendants in the Wheaton case had ICE detainers on them. My research of court documents confirmed they resided in County-owned public housing. The article I linked to here was about the incident only, and those details were unknown at the time.
Two underage girls being gang raped in one year (and a third kidnapped and murdered by MS-13 she met at Watkins Mill High School) - enough is enough. It's clear we need to address the problem here. I don't know what the specific policy should be, but just being silent about it is unconscionable at this point. How many more girls will our elected officials sacrifice for their own political gain? It's disgusting.
Now as far as the address - legally, MCPS has to have the residential address of every student. So a detective would have asked for that, and been given the record. Clearly, the school did not have it. There should be serious consequences for Rockville High School and MCPS for enrolling someone without a verified, current address.
DeleteThat's right... When you can't come up with anything else go with the "racist" name calling. If that's what makes you feel better, run with it. Just remember in the back of your very small liberal mind, illegal is illegal! Hooray for ICE!
ReplyDelete