Previously Deported Sex Offender Arrested In Greensboro

GREENSBORO, NC — A Mexican national and convicted child sex offender was arrested June 7 in Greensboro by immigration officers, 15 years after he was originally deported for the crime, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Alejandro Cortez-Lezo, who was convicted in March 2003 in Guilford County for felony charge of indecent liberties with a child, was arrested outside his home in Greensboro and taken into custody. He was in the U.S. illegally, which is a felony crime, ICE said in a statement about the case.

Cortez-Lezo was indicted Jan. 31 for illegally re-entering the U.S. after deportation and is currently in a Department of Justice facility awaiting federal prosecution, ICE said. Once his criminal charges are resolved and any potential prison sentence served, he will then be deported again.

His case is representational of the majority of ICE arrests, according to an agency official.

“Nearly 90 percent of all foreign nationals taken into ICE custody this year were targeted due to a criminal arrest,” said Sean Gallagher, who is the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Atlanta Field Office director. “Despite efforts by certain groups to misrepresent this reality, the fact is ICE continues to focus its enforcement efforts toward criminals and public safety threats.”

Arrests are also up for those without criminal convictions, according to one nonpartisan Washington, D.C. think tank. ICE arrests rose by 30 percent between 2016 and 2017, after President Donald Trump took office, and most of the increase in arrests was for those without prior convictions, according to a Pew Research Center study. In that time period, arrests for those without convictions spiked by 146 percent on a national level, it said. In the North Carolina-South Carolina-Georgia region, ICE arrests for those without prior criminal convictions was up 323 percent. “Still, the bulk of those arrested in 2016 and 2017 had prior convictions,” the Pew study said.

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