Months after a California sheriff got sued for reporting undocumented criminals to federal authorities, an illegal immigrant with a criminal history murdered four people in the veteran law enforcement official’s jurisdiction just days after being released from jail. The brutal crimes occurred in Sacramento, California where Sheriff Scott Jones was recently sued by a leftist civil rights group for transferring illegal alien offenders to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for removal rather than release them back into the community under state sanctuary laws known as the TRUTH Act and the California Values Act. The first one, which went into effect in 2017, requires that local police give criminals in the U.S. illegally a written notice of their transfer to ICE. The second, which was enacted a year later, forbids all California law enforcement agencies from using funds or employees to “investigate, interrogate, detain or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes.” The measure is also known as SB 54.
The Golden State’s outrageous sanctuary laws protected 39-year-old Mexican national David Mora-Rojas from deportation after at least two encounters with the law. In April 2021, the mother of his three children obtained a restraining order against him after a domestic violence incident, according to the Sacremento County Sheriff’s Office, which confirms that the order specifically states Mora-Rojas cannot own or possess firearms or ammunition. On February 23, 2022, Mora-Rojas was arrested Merced County about 115 miles south of Sacramento for driving under the influence, assaulting a police officer, and assaulting medical staff. ICE served a detainer on the jail, but state sanctuary laws prohibited Merced officials from holding Mora-Rojas or communicating with ICE about his release, so the illegal immigrant walked out of jail on a $15,000 bond.
Five days later Mora-Rojas shot his three daughters and a court-ordered chaperone at a Sacramento church before shooting himself. The girls were nine, 10 and 13 years old. Mora-Rojas used an Armalite Rifle (AR) style gun with no serial number or manufacturer makings, according to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office, which describes it as a Privately Made Firearm (PMF). The rifle had an extended 30-round magazine inserted and 17 casings were found at the scene. The horrific crimes occurred on February 28 at around 5 p.m. at the Church in Sacramento which is located in a residential neighborhood. The church issued a statement expressing shock and sadness, “resulting in the deaths of five of our members,” which seems to include the shooter. One Sacramento news report says court documents paint a disturbing picture of verbal and physical abuse inflicted by Mora-Rojas on the mother of his three kids, yet he was allowed to remain in the country illegally.
In the tragedy’s aftermath, Sheriff Jones is publicly expressing outrage. The 33-year law enforcement veteran is currently serving his third term as the top cop in the central California county of around 1.6 million that includes the state’s capitol. In a social media post Jones writes that “there is only ONE thing that allowed this horrific tragedy to occur with certainty: the deplorable state of our national immigration policies, and California’s Sanctuary State Laws.” Jones warns that liberals and activists will try to spin the narrative, dredge up sympathy for the monster that killed the victims and focus on the horrors of ghost guns. “When I was invited to the White House by President Trump in 2018 to discuss immigration failures in our country, I described California’s Sanctuary State law as creating ‘spectacular failures’ all over this state,” Jones writes. “I was criticized in The [Sacramento] Bee and elsewhere for that statement, but I defy them now to color this tragic event any other way.”
In November Jones was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for transferring illegal immigrants convicted of state crimes to federal authorities. The group claims that collaborating with the feds—rather than releasing illegal alien offenders back into the community—compounds racial disparities in the policing, immigration, and criminal justice systems, in which black and Latinx communities are disproportionately targeted for arrest, detention, and deportation. In the federal complaint the ACLU accuses Jones and his agency of violating California sanctuary laws by reporting illegal immigrants jailed for committing local crimes to ICE upon completing their sentence. The offenders are eligible to return to their home and communities in the U.S. but instead are enduring a “cruel double punishment,” according to the ACLU attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the illegal aliens. The Sacramento County Sheriff’s “anti-immigrant agenda” harms communities, the ACLU lawyer asserts. The group has failed to issue a statement or comment on the Mora-Rojas murders, which could have been prevented if he were deported after his first encounter with local law enforcement.