Antonio Melendez Reyes
On June 16, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced the indictment of Salvadoran national Antonio Melendez Reyes, 59, “for Rape in the First Degree and other related charges, for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old child in an alley as she walked home”. If you want to understand why the Laken Riley Act doubles down on a requirement in section 241(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality (INA) that all aliens under final removal orders be detained for deportation, look no further.
The Alleged Attack in Huntington, N.Y.
Before continuing, note that until and unless Melendez Reyes is convicted, the allegations against him are just that, allegations, and under our Anglo-American traditions of due process, he is entitled to a presumption of innocence. That said, if the charges are true, this is a uniquely disturbing crime.
The Suffolk County DA’s press release in the matter explains that “according to” its investigation:
on June 6, 2026, Melendez Reyes allegedly approached a 16-year-old girl as she was walking home on New York Avenue in Huntington. Melendez Reyes allegedly repeatedly asked the child for her phone number, which she refused to give him. Melendez Reyes then allegedly forced the child down an alley where he sexually assaulted her.
During the assault, the child was able to escape while partially unclothed, climbed a tall fence, and called 911. While she was on the phone with police dispatch, Melendez Reyes allegedly continued to search for the victim. When police arrived, they located Melendez Reyes and placed him under arrest.
Among the offenses he is charged with are two counts of rape in the first degree (a class B violent felony under section 130.35 of the N.Y. Penal Code), sexual abuse in the first degree (a class D felony under section 130.65 of the N.Y. Penal Code), and two counts of rape in the third degree (a class E felony under section 130.25 of the N.Y. Penal Code).
The first-degree rape charge alone carries a potential punishment of 25 years’ imprisonment.
“ICE Asks Sanctuary Politicians in New York to Not Release Criminal Illegal Alien”
Two days after the Suffolk County DA announced the charges in this case, DHS issued its own press release, “ICE Asks Sanctuary Politicians in New York to Not Release Criminal Illegal Alien Charged with Raping a 16-Year-Old Girl”, which provides additional alleged facts about Melendez Reyes.
According to the department, the Salvadoran national originally entered the United States at an unknown time and place, was placed into proceedings, and was ordered removed on July 10, 1998.
In other words, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and now ICE could have removed Melendez Reyes at any point over the past 28 years, but for reasons that are unknown and unstated, his deportation has not been a priority over the past six presidential administrations.
He’s a priority for enforcement now: DHS has placed a detainer on him and is begging New York State, a sanctuary jurisdiction, not to ignore that request as it has in nearly 7,000 cases where officials in the Empire State have not honored detainers since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Unlike in countless other notable instances involving illegal immigrants charged in high-profile cases (such as “Maryland man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia), Suffolk County put Melendez Reyes’s alienage right out there: the first two words in its press release are “Salvadoran national”.
The DA also announced therein that ICE “has lodged a detainer to take custody of Melendez Reyes following this prosecution”.
Both those facts (presumably) suggest Melendez Reyes won’t join those thousands of other aliens who were ushered out the (metaphorical) back door of the New York legal system, but then if the charges in his case are proven, he likely won’t be a free man for decades.
Section 241(a) and Texas v. U.S.
Section 241(a)(1)(A) of the INA directs DHS to remove aliens under final orders of removal within 90 days (the “removal period”), and under section 241(a)(2)(A), the department is required to detain those aliens throughout that removal period.
Most aliens under final removal orders are not, in fact, detained, though section 241(a)(2)(A) continues, mandating the detention of aliens ordered removed on criminal and national security grounds and barring their release in all cases.
Not to be jaded, but a statutory mandate without an enforcement mechanism is merely a “suggestion”, or at least this one has been treated as such since section 241(a) was amended to its current form by Congress in 1996.
The most egregious offender was President Biden’s DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, who issued “guidelines” in September 2021 that required ICE officers to consider and weigh various (irrelevant) “aggravating” and “mitigating” factors before taking those and other criminal aliens into custody.
The states of Texas and Louisiana, however, demanded ICE take those criminals out of their communities and remove them from the United States, suing the Biden administration to force compliance with the statutory detention mandate in section 241(a)(2)(A) and a similar one for criminal aliens in removal proceedings in section 236(c) of the INA.
That case made its way to the Supreme Court, where in June 2023 a majority of the justices held that no one — not even a state — had standing to sue the executive branch for failing to enforce the immigration laws.
The Laken Riley Act
Congressional Republicans (in particular) were displeased with that outcome, and as soon as the GOP — which already had a majority in the House — took control of the Senate in January 2025, one of the first items on its agenda was passing S. 5, the Laken Riley Act.
That act amended the INA to allow state officials to sue DHS in federal court to force compliance with the mandates in the INA, and specifically (though not exclusively) sections 241(a)(2) and 236(c) of the INA.
Section 3(e) of that act added a new section 241(a)(2)(B) to the INA, which gives state attorneys general and “other authorized State officers” standing to sue DHS whenever it fails to take an alien ordered removed on criminal or national security grounds into custody and detain them for deportation.
To be clear, however, that amendment also allows the states to sue DHS for failing to take any alien under a final order of removal into custody during the removal period, and Melendez Reyes would be Exhibit A for that authority, again assuming the facts as alleged by Suffolk County and DHS are true.
That act was named after Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student murdered in broad daylight during what prosecutors described as an attempted rape in Athens, Ga., in February 2024 by one Jose Ibarra.
Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant: (1) entered illegally in 2022; (2) was apprehended at the Southwest border by Border Patrol; (3) released; (4) arrested by local cops for child endangerment in New York in 2023 and released; and then (5) arrested and released by Athens police for shoplifting in Georgia weeks later, all prior to Riley’s killing.
It’s questionable whether those state charges would have subjected Ibarra to mandatory immigration detention at the time of those earlier offenses, but elsewhere the act amended section 236(c) of the INA to require DHS to take custody of all aliens “charged with, arrested for, convicted of, who admit having committed, or admit committing acts which constitute the essential elements of any burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, or assault of a law enforcement officer offense, or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury to another person” and hold them throughout removal proceedings.
That said, the Laken Riley Act was never intended as a post hoc Band-Aid that only covered aliens with prior criminal records like Ibarra. The amendments in section 3(a) of that act cover all aliens — like Melendez Reyes — who are under final removal orders, regardless of when those orders were entered.
More Allegations to Come?
While it’s possible that (assuming the government’s allegations in his case are true) this is the first time Melendez Reyes has ever run afoul of the law, I doubt it. Most recidivists are “upward offenders”, moving from property or drug offenses to violent ones, and few jump directly to the sorts of sexual offenses this Salvadoran has been charged with.
In other words, don’t be surprised if authorities release additional allegations about his criminal history, but then don’t be surprised if you don’t hear much about such disclosures, either, because most national media outlets treat alien criminality as a purely “local” issue.
One reason Congress has long required immigration officers to detain and deport aliens under final orders is to protect innocent Americans from future crimes. Aliens who can’t legally work but won’t leave have little to lose. The Laken Riley Act put teeth into those mandates, and if you want to understand why, look no further than this alleged disturbing offense in Long Island, N.Y.