An infuriating story

Illegal Immigrant and convicted killer, but set free

Ruling lets killer out while awaiting deportation

BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - After 16-year-old Ashton Cline-McMurray was brutally murdered, his mother took some comfort in hearing that at least some of her son's killers would never walk American streets again.

It's the reason why Sandra Hutchinson agreed with letting the purported gang members, several of them illegal immigrants, plead guilty to lesser charges. She says the prosecutor reassured her that, after their criminal sentences were finished, those in the country illegally would be deported.

"They said that they would never set foot, basically on American soil again. In other words, they'd be like in jail until they got sent back," Hutchinson said.

It's no wonder Hutchinson wanted her son's killers gone. Her son was disabled with cerebral palsy when he was attacked while walking home from a football game in Revere.

"They stabbed him. They beat him. They beat him with rungs out of stairs. They beat him with a golf club," Hutchinson said. "They stabbed him through his heart a couple of times. And through his lung. They stabbed him in his abdomen. He didn't have a chance, really."

The four purported gang members who killed her son pleaded guilty to lesser charges, from manslaughter to second degree murder, meaning they didn't serve the mandatory life sentence without parole that comes with a murder conviction.

That allowed one of the defendants, Loeun Heng, to be released by the Massachusetts Parole Board last March. The illegal immigrant was immediately taken into custody by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But instead of being deported to his native Cambodia, Heng is back on American streets.

"It's crazy," Hutchinson said. "They're just letting them back out there to do it to somebody else."

Heng is free in America thanks to a little-known Supreme Court decision from 2001, Zadvydas v. Davis, which forbids federal immigration authorities from detaining illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported for more than six months.

The Supreme Court carved out a few exceptions for terrorism and other cases, but in the vast majority of cases, illegal immigrants must be released after 180 days if they aren't deported, often because their home countries aren't cooperating.

"The government is releasing him because it has no choice," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which generally supports tougher enforcement on immigration matters. "We can't deport people unless their home country will take them back," Vaughan said.

"Do you think this puts the public at risk?" asked FOX Undercover reporter Mike Beaudet.

"Oh absolutely it puts the public at risk because ICE is forced to release people that it would like to remove but it can't and it's no longer allowed to hold them in detention," Vaughan replied.

Vaughan estimates that thousands of illegal immigrants have been released nationwide, and probably dozens have been let go in New England.

But ICE wouldn't say just how many illegal immigrants had been released back onto American streets because of Zadvydas.

ICE also wouldn't comment on Heng's case, but said in a statement that the agency makes every effort to deport illegal immigrants within the 180-day limit imposed by the court.

"Our ability to remove individuals is dependent upon the responsiveness of foreign countries," ICE spokesman Chuck Jackson said. "If we are unable to make a convincing argument that the removal will occur within the reasonable foreseeable future, ICE must release the alien."

Hutchinson is thinking about her son's other killers, and wondering if they'll all be back on the street soon, too.

"I just want everyone in the neighborhood to know that they're all going to be all back. And I don't think that's right," she said.

Two other men convicted of the crime remain in prison. Both are believed to be illegal immigrants, so the government will attempt to deport them when they're released.

The fourth man convicted is already free, but it appears he's in this country legally.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office mistakenly thought ICE had the ability to detain illegal immigrants waiting to be deported indefinitely when it cut the plea deal in 2003, but the Supreme Court's ruling came down two years before that.

A spokesman for the district attorney's office says prosecutors could never promise someone would be deported, because that's a decision that's out of their hands.

The spokesman adds that it's disappointing that Heng has not been removed from this country.

Cambodia's embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to requests for information about Heng's case.