An illegal immigrant wanted for murder has been captured and deported from the U.S. after he was released into the country by the Obama administration.
Josue Salvador Hernandez Portillo first arrived in the U.S. from El Salvador in October 2016. He was apprehended by Border Patrol agents but was later allowed to bond out of the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), thanks to former President Barack Obama’s loose border policies at the time.
In 2016, Obama's DHS released Josue Salvador Hernandez Portillo into the U.S. A year later, a warrant was issued for his arrest on murder charges in El Salvador. He was only just deported last week. https://t.co/qwdOyq9E73
— John 👽 (@JxhnBxnder) July 20, 2023
Between 2017 and 2018, the government of El Salvador issued an arrest warrant for Portillo for aggravated homicide and deprivation of liberties.
In January 2019, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Portillo. In April 2023, the Salvadoran national failed to appear before a federal immigration judge at his deportation hearing in Arlington, Virginia, and was ordered deported in absentia.
He was then deported on July 14 after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Richmond, Virginia, in May.
This comes as the U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers since President Joe Biden announced last year that he would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
Since then, nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border for the fiscal year ending in September, surpassing the already-historic number of 1.7 million migrant detainees in 2021. The numbers are likely to increase now that “Title 42” has been lifted.
Border officials have also reported a rising number of dead bodies found near the border. According to Brooks County Sheriff Benny Martinez, deputies recovered the bodies or remains of at least 26 migrants between January 1 and July 1. Most of the discoveries involved the collection of skeletal remains scattered by animals and scavenger birds.
“Most of the time, that is all that is left,” Martinez said. “It doesn’t take long with the animals and the heat for a human body to decay.”
Border Patrol agents have recovered the bodies or remains of at least 880 migrants who died while or shortly after crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. during FY2022.
