ICE Investigated for Failing to Deport Illegal Before He Killed Woman

Warner Todd Huston

1/22/2016

Source …..

The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has agreed to a request from several Connecticut officials to investigate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s failure to deport convicted felon Jean Jacques before he murdered a Norwich woman.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Murphy, the Nutmeg State’s senators, and Connecticut Congressman

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) had urged the inspector general to determine why ICE released Jacques, a 41-year-old illegal immigrant from Haiti, even though his prison file was marked “Detainer: Immigration.”

Jacques was released on parole into ICE custody in January of 2015 after serving a 17-year sentence for attempted murder. In fact, he was remanded to ICE twice. Instead of deporting him, though, ICE simply released him back into the public. Unfortunately, by June he had been arrested by local police again for the stabbing death of 25-year-old Casey Chadwick of Norwich, CT.

Jacques is being held in lieu of $1 million and is charged with the woman’s murder.

The elected officials banded together to ask the IG how Jacques was free to be in a position to allegedly commit the murder. With the IG’s announcement, the three officials released a statement celebrating the investigation. Murphy, Blumenthal, and Courtney said:

We are pleased that the Office of the Inspector General has heeded our call and will now conduct a thorough, independent inquiry of this deeply troubling case. It is unacceptable that ICE failed to remove a convicted attempted murderer subject to a final deportation order–a measure that would have saved the life of Casey Chadwick. ICE’s responses thus far to our repeated inquiries into this case have been incomplete and unsatisfactory, and we hope that this independent inquiry will finally uncover the facts surrounding this tragedy, enabling reforms necessary to ensure that this never happens again.

The murdered woman’s family is furious that Jacques was not deported after being released on parole after a 1997 conviction.

“If they did what they were supposed to do, my daughter would be with me right now,” the dead woman’s mother, Wendy Hartling, said.

“I look at my phone and I’m not going to get her texts anymore. I’m not going to get her phone calls anymore. I’m not going to see her anymore,” the woman said.