Trumpworld claims Kilmar Abrego Garcia was in MS-13. But new information concerning the local cop who attested to that charge at the time raises fresh questions about it.
newrepublic.com
The Maryland police officer who formally attested to Abrego Garcia’s supposed gang affiliation in 2019—when he was detained the first time—was subsequently suspended from the force for a serious transgression: giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker,
The New Republic has established.
This officer—apparently a senior detective on Abrego Garcia’s case in 2019—is named Ivan Mendez, according to information provided by Abrego Garcia’s lawyer at the time, Lucia Curiel, who is also a member of his current legal team. Mendez was subsequently indicted for this offense, pleaded guilty, and received probation.
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To support this claim, ICE relied on what’s known as a Gang Field Interview Sheet, supplied by the Prince George’s County police. It claimed that Abrego Garcia wore a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, that this was evidence of membership in MS-13, and that a “confidential source” had related that he was a member of the gang’s Westerns clique. But that operates in New York, where he never lived.
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Ivan Mendez was the officer who filled out this gang interview sheet, according to a copy of the sheet itself, which we obtained from Curiel. And Curiel tells us that repeated conversations with the P.G. County police inspector general confirmed that Mendez was a lead detective on Abrego Garcia’s case.
What’s more, it turns out that Mendez was suspended, in early April 2019, for “providing information to a commercial sex worker who he was paying in exchange for sexual acts.” That’s according to the P.G. County police’s
own announcement of his indictment, which came a year later, in June 2020. Strikingly, the information Mendez shared was related to “an on-going police investigation.”
“This is clearly not an officer that respects the rules and protocols,” Curiel told us. “If he’s willing to do that, what else is he willing to do?”
Mendez ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge and received probation, according to the office of Aisha Braveboy, the state’s attorney for Prince George’s County. The office also confirmed Mendez’s police ID number, which matches the one on the gang sheet. The P.G. County police declined comment, but the department
appears to have acted on this misconduct efficaciously.
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You do realize that undocumented immigrants contributed 25.7 billion dollars to social security in 2022, right? And that most of these individuals will pay into these programs for YEARS and never see any benefit... this creating a net positive on the system.
