Karl Etters

Democrat staff writer

Two Leon County Jail inmates — one accused of killing his girlfriend — were ordered to be deported years before they committed the violent crimes for which they’re charged.

Marco Vinicio Perez, a Guatemalan native in the U.S. illegally, was ordered to be deported Nov. 1, 2012, according to Immigration Court documents obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat.

But he was still in the country and living in Tallahassee more than three years later, when he was arrested on first-degree murder charges for the January 2016 beating death of his girlfriend, Idelcira Perez. He told police at the time demons in his head told him to kill the 25-year-old mother and leave her body in a wooded vacant lot off Apalachee Parkway.

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The other inmate, Donald Robinson, was ordered to be deported to Jamaica in May 2011. Yet, he was still in the U.S. when he was arrested in January 2015 at C.K. Steele Plaza for stabbing with a knife a man he thought was threatening him.

Tallahassee Police investigators noted in their report of the incident that Robinson had eight other cases within the previous 18 months with TPD. He told them he had a mental illness, and in at least five reports, he told officers he was being followed, harassed and threatened with weapons, which he never saw.

After spending more than a year in jail, Robinson was released on probation. But it wasn’t long before he was in trouble again. Last June, he was accused again of stabbing a man he did not know, this time with a pair of scissors, at the McDonald’s on North Monroe Street.

Such cases are coming under increased scrutiny as part of a renewed national debate on illegal immigration prompted in part by the election of President Donald Trump. Last month, federal immigration officers arrested nearly 700 people in a crackdown on immigrants who were in the country illegally and had criminal convictions or charges against them.

How the local men were able to avoid deportation and ultimately commit violent crimes in Tallahassee isn’t entirely clear. It is unknown if either had a previous criminal record or whether either of their orders to be removed from the U.S. were carried out. Re-entering the U.S. after a deportation order is a federal criminal offense punishable by up to two years in prison.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman did not have information regarding the two men's deportation cases.

Perez and Robinson are two of three Leon County inmates with pending federal deportation orders.

Little is known about Perez, whose alias is Marco Perez-Geronimo, except for when he was ordered more than four years ago to be deported by Miami Immigration Court Judge Michael C. Horn. The order came after Perez failed to attend a hearing called for by the Department of Homeland Security.

The reason for the hearing is unclear, but Perez did not file an appeal to his deportation decision, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s electronic court system.

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In Robinson’s case, his deportation order came in December 2010 while he was detained at the Stewart Detention Center, a privately operated ICE facility in Lumpkin, Georgia. The order was finalized six months later.

Robinson appealed the decision, but his challenge was dismissed in September 2011 by the Board of Immigration Appeals, according to federal records.

In July 2015, Robinson was found incompetent to stand trial for the C.K. Steele assault. His immigration hold was released seven days later and he was sent to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, where he stayed until February 2016. He was given credit for time served in jail, released and given probation in a plea deal with prosecutors — a sentence he is appealing.

Four months later, Robinson was charged in the McDonald’s stabbing incident. He is still awaiting trial while undergoing a competency evaluation.

Accused criminals with active deportation orders are often kept in the U.S. to face their charges for several reasons, said Assistant State Attorney Lorena Vollrath-Bueno, who is prosecuting Perez's case.

Deportation is not a guarantee an individual will not return to the country and is more of a civil procedure, she said. But victims are entitled to see justice served and gain closure in their cases.

"My job as a prosecutor is to make sure the punishment is appropriate for the crime they have done," she said. "If I have someone who is violent, whether it be murder or a sex crime, I think it’s irresponsible to say I’m going to solve that by having that person deported."

Deporting those accused of violent crimes instead of bringing them before the criminal justice system leaves people in their home countries just as vulnerable.

"If I decide to have the person deported after they’ve committed a violent crime," she continued, "I’m giving them the opportunity to go back to where they came from and potentially have them victimize someone there."

Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter

INCIDENT REPORTS:

Here are the police reports forMarco Vinicio Perez and Donald Robinson