Immigration authorities in Chicago arrested a 52-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant accused of decapitating a missing Illinois woman and storing her body in a bleach-filled storage container.
Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, a resident of Waukegan, Illinois, was taken into custody in April and charged with concealing a corpse, abuse of a corpse, and obstruction of justice, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Despite the severity of the charges, Lake County Judge Randie Bruno immediately ordered Mendoza-Gonzalez’s release from custody following his initial court appearance.
He was re-arrested Saturday afternoon at a market in Chicago by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and is currently being held in ICE custody, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In April, police in Waukegan, Illinois, discovered the body of 37-year-old Megan Bos—who had been reported missing on March 9—in a container located in the yard of Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez.
According to her family, Bos had disappeared in February.
Mendoza-Gonzalez is accused of keeping her body on his property for nearly two months and abusing her corpse, Fox News reported.
DHS officials told FOX News that Bos had been decapitated and her body was discovered in a storage container filled with bleach.
“It is absolutely repulsive this monster walked free on Illinois’ streets after allegedly committing such a heinous crime,” a DHS spokesperson told the outlet. “Megan Bos and her family will have justice.”
Following Mendoza-Gonzalez’s release in April, Antioch Mayor Scott Gartner shredded the laws that permitted the suspected criminal alien to walk free, according to a report from FOX 32 Chicago.
“I was shocked to find out literally the next day that the person that they had arrested for this had been released from prison under the SAFE-T Act less than, detained less, I think, than 48 hours,” Gartner said. “There’s other extenuating circumstances in this case. Not only the type of crime, how long the crime was concealed, the fact that the person that was arrested for this is not a U.S. citizen, and, you know, can maybe [flee] the country.”
State Rep. Tom Weber (R) expressed concern about Mendoza-Gonzalez’s release in April, Fox noted.
“Someone that hid their body in a garbage can for 51 days after leaving it in the basement for two days, after not calling 911 [and] breaking a phone. Is this a non-detainable offense?” Weber said. “Should we not find out, wait for a toxicology report, anything?”
The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), meanwhile, said his agency will arrest anyone found to be in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have a criminal record, while also stepping up enforcement against employers who hire unauthorized workers.
Todd Lyons emphasized in an interview with CBS News that the agency will focus its “limited resources” on targeting and deporting “the worst of the worst,” individuals in the U.S. who are also unlawfully present and have serious criminal backgrounds.
However, Lyons made clear that even non-criminals living in the U.S. without legal status will be taken into custody during enforcement operations. He argued that so-called “sanctuary” policies—where states and cities limit cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement—are forcing agents to enter communities to make arrests, since noncitizen inmates are not being turned over, CBS reported.
“What’s, again, frustrating for me is the fact that we would love to focus on these criminal aliens that are inside a jail facility,” Lyons told Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday. “A local law enforcement agency, state agency, already deemed that person a public safety threat and arrested them, and they’re in detention.”
“I’d much rather focus all of our limited resources on that to take them into custody, but we do have to go out into the community and make those arrests, and that’s where you are seeing (that) increase” in so-called “collateral” arrests.
If ICE encounters someone “that is here in the country illegally, we will take them into custody,” Lyons said.