 |
House Judiciary Committee Republicans issued a report this week captioned “The Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration's Open-Borders Policies: The Cases of Four Illegal Aliens Who Viciously Attacked a Man on a Chicago Train”. Regrettably, such stories are now so common as to be mundane, but the facts of this case are so shocking, they’re notable because they present a single instance in which so many flawed administration policies and a questionable law have –allegedly – combined to result in grievous harm to an individual.
“Four Illegal Aliens Attacked a Man on a Chicago Transit Authority Train”
That report focuses on an incident that happened during the late afternoon of February 17, 2024, when an unidentified 49-year-old man was robbed by four other men while riding a Chicago Transit Authority train.
“Robbed” hardly does that incident justice. As the committee explained, “The victim was put into ‘a vicious chokehold’ to the point he became unconscious and was robbed of ‘$400 and a cellphone’”, but even those details elide the brutality of the attack, as I’ll explain.
Four Venezuelan nationals – each of whom claimed they’d been living in “state-funded migrant shelters” at the time they were charged – were arrested for that crime: Johandry Fernando Loyo-Rodriguez (22); Wilker Miguel Gutierrez Sierra (21); Carlos Luis Carreno-Carreno (20); and Yonnier Jose Guasamucare-Garcia (18). The report explains how they all came to be in Chicago, Ill. that afternoon.
Johandry Fernando Loyo-Rodriguez. Loyo-Rodriguez was apprehended by Border Patrol agents near Eagle Pass, Texas, shortly after he entered illegally in July 2023.
After he was encountered, he refused to answer agents’ questions, but did claim a fear of return to Venezuela. Consequently, he was sent to a USCIS asylum officer, who explained the Biden-Harris administration’s “parole” program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – “CHNV parole” – to him.
The officer gave Loyo-Rodriguez the opportunity to voluntarily withdraw his application for admission, which he accepted, and he was returned to Mexico on August 2, 2023, so that he could take advantage of yet another Biden-Harris migrant program, the CBP One app interview scheme.
He returned just over a month later, but not through the port using CBP One. Instead, he simply crossed again illegally, this time farther up the Rio Grande near El Paso on September 16, 2023.
He was again apprehended, and despite the fact Border Patrol agents concluded that he was “likely to abscond”, he was released on his own recognizance with a Notice to Appear (“NTA”, the charging document in removal proceedings), purportedly due to a lack of detention space.
As the committee noted in its report: “According to DHS’s own data, however, the agency had capacity to detain Loyo-Rodriguez when he was released”.
Wilker Miguel Gutierrez Sierra. Sierra was also apprehended by the Border Patrol, again near El Paso, only in his case on September 21, 2023.
He too claimed a fear of harm but was never interviewed by an asylum officer. Instead, he was issued an NTA to appear in immigration court in Houston on January 25, 2024, and was also released “due to a lack of space” – although again, according to the committee, DHS had available detention beds.
Carlos Luis Carreno-Carreno. Carreno-Carreno was apprehended by agents shortly after he entered illegally near Eagle Pass on July 15, 2023, and he too refused to answer agents’ questions but again, asserted a fear of harm if returned.
He was interviewed by an asylum officer who concluded there was a “reasonable possibility” Carreno-Carreno would be subject to torture if he were returned to Venezuela. Consequently, he was released on his own recognizance with an NTA to appear in immigration court in Chicago on May 20, 2026.
After he was released, he and Loyo-Rodriguez were arrested at a Ross Dress For Less in Morton Grove, Ill., on January 21, were cited, and released.
Yonnier Jose Guasamucare-Garcia. Which brings me to Guasamucare-Garcia, the youngest of the quartet. Border Patrol agents apprehended him near Eagle Pass on September 18, 2022.
As he was 16 at the time, he was processed as an unaccompanied alien child (UAC) and apparently transferred to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in accordance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) – even though he had told agents that his parents lived in Colombia, that he had no fear of return to Venezuela, and that he’d left home “searching for a better life with [his] grandmother”.
On October 11, 2022 – 23 days after he was apprehended – he was released to a “sponsor” in the United States. Just over two months later, he was arrested for retail theft at a Saks Off Fifth at an outlet mall in Rosemont, Ill., at which time, police allege, he “possessed a blue bag with a foil lining designed to defeat shoplifting sensor devices”.
Despite their arrests, neither he, nor Loyo-Rodriguez, nor Carreno-Carreno were taken back into federal custody.
The Offense, in Detail
Which brings me back to the alleged attack on the train in Chicago in February. Before I continue, I’ll note that none of the four has been convicted in connection with that offense and are entitled to a presumption of innocence unless and until they are.
Local Chicago reporting indicates, however, that the incident began when Carreno-Carreno motioned for the victim to come to the back of the train. “While the man didn’t know Carreno-Carreno or the other three migrants, he walked over to see what they wanted”.
Once the victim got to the back of the train, according to that report, “Sierra allegedly stood in the doorway to prevent him from escaping and blocking other passengers’ view”. Then:
Following a short conversation. . . Guasamucare-Garcia . . . jumped on the victim and wrapped his arm around the man’s neck. He squeezed until the man soiled himself, lost consciousness, and fell to the floor, according to prosecutors.
While Guasamucare-Garcia strangled the man . . . Loyo-Rodriguez . . . reached into the victim’s pockets and took his phone and about $400 from his wallet, said prosecutors.
Having taken forensics in law school, I can assure you it takes a lot of pressure on the neck to prompt an individual to “soil himself” (defecation is a common response to hanging, part of why it’s considered an undignified way to die), which simply underscores the savage nature of this alleged attack.
“All four men are charged with robbery and aggravated battery by strangulation”, and a judge ordered three of them detained as threats to public safety. The court released Gutierrez-Sierra, however, on an ankle monitor despite the prosecution’s request that he be detained, as well.
In any case, the events of this alleged offense raise any number of questions, beginning with whether any or all of these migrants had criminal histories before they arrived in the United States and whether they knew each other back home or simply became acquainted (and conspired) here.
Not surprisingly, all denied they’d had trouble with the law previously, and DHS or HHS apparently ran checks on each of them before they were released.
Those checks likely didn’t find much, however, because as the committee explained:
Immigration authorities do not vet illegal aliens against databases in the aliens’ countries of origin. As a result, if there is derogatory information about an alien in that alien’s home country, the current checks are unlikely to reveal it. As former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott testified to [Congress] in 2023, the U.S. government has “very, very minuscule data” available when an alien arrives at the southwest border because “[c]rimes committed by a foreign national outside the U.S. rarely appear in [U.S.] databases.” [Footnotes omitted.]
That’s hardly heartening to those concerned about public safety, to say nothing of national security.
Putting aside UAC Guasamucare-Garcia and the questionable logic of the TVPRA, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) mandates that DHS should have detained each of these illegal migrants – from the moment they were encountered by CBP to the point at which they were either granted protection or removed.
Part of that mandate has to do with Congress’s attempt to deter illegal entrants from making weak or bogus asylum claims to secure release from custody, but an equally important congressional interest was ensuring that unvetted aliens not be released into the country.
Despite that mandate, as the committee complains:
In less than four years, the Biden-Harris Administration has released into the United States more than 5.6 million illegal aliens, with another 1.9 million illegal alien “gotaways” escaping into the country during the same time. That chaos at the southwest border, created and incentivized by the radical policies of President Joe Biden and “border czar” Vice President Kamala Harris, has led to insecurity in the interior of the country. [Footnote omitted.]
Shockingly, that report continues:
In a recent transcribed interview before the Committee, one senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official admitted that instead of arresting illegal aliens who pose public safety threats and national security threats at the border, some ICE officers have been reassigned to tasks that facilitate illegal alien releases into the United States. [Emphasis added.]
If true, that suggests the border policies of the current administration haven’t focused on either compliance with the INA, or with the safety and interests of the American people, but instead on what is best for those who have come here illegally, consequences notwithstanding.
It’s rare to find a case in which so many flawed policies (CHNV parole, CBP One, “catch and release”) and questionable laws (TVPRA) have combined to (allegedly) result in such grievous harm, but Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee lay it out convincingly. Don’t expect most in the media, however, to pay their findings much mind, because it doesn’t fit the narrative they seek to promote.