The Venezuelan immigrant accused of shooting and killing two NYPD officers early Monday morning entered the United States illegally last year, but the case against him had already been dismissed, The Washington Post can exclusively reveal.
Bernardo Castro Mata, 19, who shot an officer in the chest and leg after he tried to stop his moped in Queens, had a hearing in Chicago on May 6 where an immigration judge closed his case, according to an ICE source.
The information came less than 24 hours after The Washington Post revealed that the Biden administration had denied asylum applications and deportation orders for 350,000 migrants because they had no criminal records or were not deemed a national security threat.
These immigrants are under no obligation to leave the country and are not subject to monitoring by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [ICE].
“The Biden administration is allowing foreign nationals to take advantage of every opportunity to violate our nation’s immigration laws, without any final or substantive resolution to their cases.
“This is just the latest example of the government’s inability to adequately vet large numbers of people randomly coming across the border,” John Fehr, a former assistant commissioner at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Washington Post.
Mata illegally crossed the border into Eagle Pass, Texas, where he was arrested but released in July 2023.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) source said the Venezuelan national did not give authorities an address, so they directed him to immigration court in Chicago for processing.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post about Mata’s case.
The Biden administration’s blanket closing of cases means that migrants’ asylum will not be granted or denied, but rather their cases will be removed from immigration courts entirely.
A memo issued in 2022 by ICE Chief Legal Counsel Kelly Doyle and reviewed by The Washington Post instructed ICE prosecutors to allow cases to be closed for immigrants who are not deemed a national security threat.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is poised to issue an executive order to close the southern border if the number of migrants crossing the border reaches a certain number of days, either 2,500 or 4,000, according to sources.
Federal authorities recorded an average of 5,990 daily crossings in April, excluding “fugitives” who smuggled themselves across the border into the United States to avoid arrest.
But Fehle said the order came too late and the damage to Americans’ safety has already been done.
“The Biden administration doesn’t seem too concerned about the impact of its open border policy and is apparently trying to justify this chaos through executive orders.
“If we want to reduce illegal immigration and reduce problematic people coming into the country, we should increase deportations and impose tougher penalties on foreigners who game the system.
“Instead, they continue to welcome lawlessness and the harm that comes with it to American society,” Fehr said.
In addition to the shooting deaths of two NYPD officers, Mata is also accused of assisting in two snatch robberies just days earlier in which he attacked two women, one of whom was punched in the face, police and sources said.
“The pattern that we’re currently investigating in Queens involving him includes cell phone snatchings, an incident where a woman was assaulted and her credit card was stolen and ultimately used at a tobacco store in Queens,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney told reporters after Monday’s police shooting.
