Of the 9,527 inmates in Harris County Jail, Texas, over 1,000 are being held under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. ICE detainers notify local authorities about the agency’s intent to assume custody of foreign nationals, requesting that local officials hold those inmates for up to 48 hours so that ICE can take charge of them.
Among the ICE detainers in Harris County, 43 percent are related to violent crimes, including 75 murder cases, with 22 classified as capital murders. Detainers connected to sexual assault account for 174 cases, over half of which involve children under 14 years of age.
Two high-profile inmates in Harris County are a pair of Venezuelan nationals facing charges for the murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. The girl’s mother has publicly criticized the Biden-Harris government’s immigration policies, blaming them for her daughter’s death.
The jail also houses Osman Estanly Solorzano Sanchez. The Honduran illegal faces charges of fatally shooting 27-year-old Ricardo Vega in an apparent road rage incident last April. Vega’s mother, Victoria Garcia, has shared her frustrations with Biden-Harris immigration policies, describing how her slain son “has a nine-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son who now have to grow up without a dad, and my daughter-in-law has to be without her husband.”