Thanks to virtue-signaling Democrats in New Jersey, three people in Missouri are dead at the hands of an illegal alien who should have been deported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Friday.

Luis Rodrigo Perez murdered the three in Springfield last week, local police and ICE allege. Perez had been in jail in Middlesex, New Jersey, but following the leftist policy of refusing to honor ICE requests on detainers for deportation, the jail released him.

Had the New Jersey locality honored the request from ICE, Perez would have been deported and the three victims would still be alive.

The Murders

The Springfield News-Leader reported that Perez, 23, murdered the three because he “was kicked out of a home.” Apparently infuriated, he returned and “opened fire on his ex-roommates, killing two and injuring two more.”

But the illegal Mexican, whom the newspaper identified as a “New Jersey man,” had one more person to kill, the newspaper reported:

Days before the rampage, Perez had received a gun from a 21-year-old woman named Sabrina R. Starr, who had stolen it out of a car, police say.

She gave him the gun, police say, and he gave her some tattoos.

Starr posted photos on Facebook on Oct. 28 that show Perez tattooing four words on her neck: "Kill or be killed."

A week later, on Saturday, Starr was found dead in her home....

Perez had been living with Starr after getting kicked out of the other home, police say.

Perez shot Starr six times, police allege.

Cops collared the illegal-alien when they spotted him at a Walmart, the newspaper reported. They also arrested a suspected accomplice.

Police charged Perez with three counts of first-degree murder and his accomplice with two counts of first-degree murder. Both face other charges. His girlfriend faces a charge of evidence tampering because, they allege, she helped him burn his clothes. The shooting, the newspaper reported, left Perez “covered with blood.”

ICE Statement

The victims, ICE said, would be alive had the good liberals in Middlesex County, New Jersey, not been operating their county as a sanctuary for illegal aliens.

Perez, ICE reported in a news release, was in jail on domestic violence charges. “ICE issued a detainer and requested notification prior to his release, so that he may be taken into ICE custody and placed in removal proceedings. In accordance with their local policy, Middlesex County Jail did not honor the detainer, did not notify ICE upon completion of the criminal proceedings, and released Perez into the community.”

“Yet again, an ICE detainer was ignored and a dangerous criminal alien was released to the streets and is now charged with killing three people,” said ICE Acting Executive Associate Director Corey Price. “Had ICE’s detainer request in December 2017 been honored by Middlesex County Jail, Luis Rodrigo Perez would have been placed in deportation proceedings and likely sent home to his country — and three innocent people might be alive today.”

John Tsoukaris, chief of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal office in Newark, said Middlesex County won’t work with ICE. “We have tried unsuccessfully to work with Middlesex County Jail in the interest of public safety to accept detainers and to contact ICE prior to releasing criminals,” he said. “There have been other cases where ICE detainers were not honored and those released went on to commit serious crimes. In this most recent case, Perez had a violent history, but despite that, the detainer was not honored. We hope that this tragic turn of events forces Middlesex to reconsider its policy and that the local elected officials stop protecting criminal aliens.”

County Policy

The county’s official policy is not to help ICE except under certain conditions, its website says: “It shall be the general policy of the County of Middlesex to decline 48 hour civil detainer requests from ICE (hereinafter referred to as ‘detainer requests’) for any individual currently being held in the Adult Correction Center on any criminal charge or other violation” unless the alien “has been previously convicted of a first or second degree serious offense.”

The website then lists the offenses for which the jail will detain illegal aliens.

Perez had not been convicted, so when ICE ask for a detainer, the Democrat-controlled county released him.