On Saturday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about Marvin Morales-Ortez, who is  from El Salvador and is in the country illegally.

The article reports:

A 23-year-old Reston, Virginia, man was arraigned on a murder charge Thursday after authorities say he killed a man on Wednesday and led police on a two-hour manhunt.

Two elementary schools were placed on secure-the-building status as police urgently searched for Marvin Morales-Ortez.

He killed a man he lived with, 40-year-old Marvin Ernesto Morales, police said. No information on the relationship between the two was released other than they shared the same residence.

Morales-Ortez was released from jail the day before the shooting. According to a criminal complaint, he was charged with maliciously wounding someone who lived in the home on Sept. 12. He was taken into custody on multiple charges.

That case went before a judge on Tuesday. But the prosecutor’s office said the victim didn’t show up to court to testify against Morales-Ortez, so charges were dropped.

The judge ordered Morales-Ortez released from custody.

He has a history of mental health issues, court records say. The county’s Community Services Board issued an emergency custody order shortly after his release from jail. An ECO allows police to arrest someone who poses an immediate threat to themselves or someone else. Police can take them in and get them services.

The article notes:

We need to start prosecuting the people who are responsible for releasing criminals who then kill.

Morales-Ortez was in America illegally. He should have been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported. The article notes that an ICE detainer request was ignored. He had already been accused of a crime. Had Morales-Ortez been kept in jail under an Emergency Custody Order (ECO), the man he lived with would still be alive. Cooperation with ICE or getting the Emergency Custody Order quickly would have saved a life.