Homeland Security said it has secured extradition of Eswin Mejia, bringing back from Honduras one of the highest-profile illegal immigration targets of the last decade to stand trial on charges of killing a young woman in a drunk driving car crash.
Mr. Mejia stood accused of killing Sarah Root and was released on bail on the local charges in 2016. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement refused to pursue him, allowing him to walk out of the jail and flee the country, denying Root’s family justice for years, said Secretary Kristi Noem.
Authorities said Mejia, who was in the country illegally at the time, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit for driving.
“The extradition and arrest of this criminal alien is the culmination of a nearly decade-long battle for justice for Sarah Root and her family,” Ms. Noem said. “Sarah should still be here today, and this illegal alien should have never been in our country in the first place.”
Mr. Mejia was first nabbed at the border in 2013 when he was 16 years old. He was deemed an unaccompanied alien child and was sent to live with his brother, who was already living in the U.S.
Root, who was 21 at the time of her death, was killed on the night of her college graduation.
In death, she became one of the most prominent victims of illegal immigrant crime, at a time when then-candidate Donald Trump was highlighting that issue in his first presidential campaign.
When first asked about ICE’s failure to collect Mr. Mejia, then-ICE Director Sarah Saldana said Root hadn’t died at the time the suspect was released so the case didn’t rise to a priority. In a later letter to Congress, though, she said even that wouldn’t have mattered.
Neither the law nor President Obama’s policies required an illegal immigrant charged with — or even convicted of — vehicular homicide to be detained by ICE, Ms. Saldana said.
She did say that with hindsight, her officers should have taken the initiative.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, hosted Root’s father at Mr. Trump’s address to Congress earlier this month.
Ms. Ernst is also sponsor of Sarah’s Law, which Mr. Trump signed into law as part the Laken Riley Act earlier this year. Sarah’s Law requires ICE to respond and take custody of illegal immigrants accused of murder or other crimes where someone is killed.
“For over nine years, I have called for justice on behalf of Sarah Root, and today President Trump and his administration are delivering,” the senator said Friday.
