A Haitian immigrant accused of raping a 15-year-old girl at a Massachusetts shelter has been released on bail despite federal immigration authorities’ requests to detain him.
Corey Alvarez, who had been held without bail since his arrest in March, was released on just $500 bail on Tuesday after the Plymouth County Superior Court ignored an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) request to detain the suspect. The Boston Herald reported.
Prosecutors also had asked for bail to be set at $25,000 if the judge did not order continued pretrial detention. According to the Boston Globe.
Alvarez’s release came after a pretrial motion filed by Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Crews to keep him behind bars was denied, the Herald added.
Alvarez, 26, was released with an ankle monitor attached, but because Boston is a sanctuary city – meaning local authorities aren’t required to cooperate with the federal government – ICE agents cannot track him.
He was also ordered to surrender his passport and be placed on supervised probation with two court appearances per month, according to court documents obtained by the Globe. He is due to appear again in court on Aug. 13.
Federal immigration authorities announced in March that they had filed an immigration detention order against Alvarez with the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office.
But a spokesperson for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division told the Globe that officials at Plymouth Superior Court “refused to honor” the detention order.
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, ICE sources are outraged by the release of the migrants.
One source slammed it as “classic Democrat bullshit” and that it would “make it nearly impossible to do our job.”
“It’s stupid judges who are causing a lot of these problems by ignoring the root of the problem,” the source lamented.
“California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and other Democratic-leaning states are doing this ridiculous thing. When you look at the records of people outside of these states, they have policies in place that prevent any information from being shared.”
John Fabbricatore, a former ICE field director, said Alvarez’s release represents “a disturbing trend of inadequate and failed vetting procedures.”
“This rushed process undermines the thorough checks that normally take place before parole or visas are granted, and the administration’s ad-hoc approach raises serious concerns about the safety of Americans,” Fabbricatore told the Post.
“In particular, the recent case of a Haitian woman held under Biden’s parole program who was arrested on rape charges highlights an ongoing problem. Moreover, sanctuary city policies continue to protect foreign-born criminals rather than protecting law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.”
Alvarez had no known criminal history when he entered the United States at John F. Kennedy International Airport in June 2023 under President Biden’s controversial parole program for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan (CHNV) nationals.
After Alvarez was arrested in March, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) led an investigation into the CHNV program.
Alvarez’s immigration papers said he was to live with a sponsor in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but he ended up at a Comfort Inn in Rockland, Massachusetts, that had been converted into a migrant shelter.
He was arrested at the shelter on March 13 on suspicion of raping a disabled teenage girl.
“He raped me. I begged him to leave me alone but he didn’t stop,” the victim told investigators at South Shore Hospital, according to the Herald.
Alvarez has pleaded not guilty to one count each of rape of a child by 10 years and forcible rape of a child.
