A federal agency shouldn't have to beg a state to keep an accused child rapist off the street. But that's exactly where we are. DHS is urging New York Governor Kathy Hochul and local officials not to release Aureliano Antonio Melendez Reyes — a 59-year-old Salvadoran national charged with raping a 16-year-old girl in Huntington, Long Island — and to turn him over to ICE instead.
The stakes are plain: a 16-year-old girl walking home on June 6 was asked for her phone number by Reyes, according to prosecutors and DHS. When she refused, he shoved her into an alleyway and sexually assaulted her. She fought him off, called 911 while running away, and he chased her. Officers arrested him at the scene. He now faces charges of rape, sexual abuse, and endangering the welfare of a child.
Here's the part that should enrage every American: Reyes had a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 1998. He's been in this country illegally for nearly three decades. DHS says he entered as an unknown got-away and was never deported. A system that issues deportation orders and then simply forgets about them isn't a system — it's a suggestion.
DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis didn't mince words: "This sexual predator NEVER should have been in our country and able to prey on this innocent girl." She called on Hochul and "her fellow sanctuary politicians in New York to commit to not releasing this criminal illegal alien from jail and to turn him over to ICE."
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney, to his credit, pledged to "vigorously prosecute defendants who pose serious threats to our community's safety, especially our children." But prosecution only goes so far when the state won't guarantee the feds can take custody after a sentence is served.
The broader picture is staggering. According to DHS, New York jurisdictions have released nearly 7,000 criminal illegal immigrants since January 20, 2025. Many were accused of violent crimes — homicide, assault, burglary, drug offenses. More than 7,000 individuals currently sitting in New York custody are the subjects of active federal immigration detainers, the agency says. New York's sanctuary laws mean local authorities routinely ignore those detainers and release people back into communities.
The absurdity is the core of it: a federal agency charged with protecting the homeland has to issue public statements practically pleading with a state governor to not release an accused child rapist. That's not a functioning immigration system. That's not a functioning republic. And it's a bipartisan failure — decades of both parties talking tough on enforcement while the deportation apparatus atrophied and sanctuary policies metastasized.
Fox News noted it reached out to Hochul's office and the Suffolk County DA for comment. Neither responded in time for publication.
The open question: How many more orders of removal are sitting in filing cabinets, collecting dust, while the people they're supposed to remove walk free?
