Criminal illegals, others deported

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Federal immigration officials say they have deported 120 Mexican illegal aliens, including 56 criminals with offenses ranging from manslaughter to child molestation.

Officials called the deportations this week the region's largest-recorded effort and said the deported include 36 aliens convicted of violent offenses, 15 convicted of drug-related crimes and six classified as sexual predators of children. Four also may have been members of violent gangs in the area.

"Criminal aliens have no right to be in the United States," said Mary Loiselle, field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "They continue to commit violent crimes and terrorize our communities. We will not tolerate it."

Ernestine Fobbs, an agency spokesman, said the other 64 aliens were deported for immigration violations.

Among the most violent was 32-year-old Tomas Valdez-Gonzalez,convicted of manslaughter for fatally stabbing a person in El Monte, Calif. He was arrested after being deported and trying to re-enter the United States illegally, officials said.

Gerardo Martinez-Alvarez, 23, was arrested as part of an ICE crackdown on gangs. Officials said he was involved in the stabbing of a 14-year-old at a Manassas mall in April.

Javier Rubio-Martinez, 18, was deported after being convicted in March of carnal knowledge of a minor. He was arrested as part of Operation Predator, the agency's nationwide initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

Agency investigators have arrested more than 5,750 sexual predators and deported more than 2,100 foreign nationals since Operation Predator started in 2003.

Officials said most of the aliens deported this week were from Northern Virginia and had been held in detention facilities throughout the state prior to their removal.

The aliens were loaded on a U.S. Marshals Service plane Monday and returned to Mexico."

The agency defines the region as the District and Virginia. There are 200,000 to 250,000 illegal aliens in Virginia and 20,000 to 35,000 in the District, according to a study released in June by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Last year, agency officials deported 1,391 aliens from the area, including 819 criminal aliens.