Two illegal immigrants residing in the Washington D.C. suburb and sanctuary county of Montgomery County, Maryland are accused of repeatedly raping an 11-year-old girl. Mauricio Barrera-Navidad, 29, of Damascus, and Carlos Palacios-Amaya, 28, of Gaithersburg, were arrested and each charged with second-degree rape. The two men knew the girl through a friendship with her older brother.
The child reported the rapes to a social worker at her school.
In September 2018, the victim was introduced to her older brother’s friend, Palacios-Amaya. Over the course of the next few months, the then 27-year-old man raped the middle schooler on multiple occasions, authorities allege. The victim recalled one instance where Palacios-Amaya “used his cell phone to video record the two of them having sex,” police noted in court documents.
The victim told the social worker that Palacios-Amaya would often pressure her not to attend school so that she could stay home while her parents were at work. That gave Palacios-Amaya unsupervised access to the girl.
Investigators say while reviewing the victim’s cell phone, they located numerous photographs of Palacios-Amaya with the girl.
The other suspect, Barrera-Navidad, reportedly attended the victim’s older brother’s birthday party on July 2018. The celebration took place at a mobile home park in Germantown.
At one point in the evening, Barrera-Navidad and the 11-year-old victim entered a bedroom. According to police, Barrera-Navidad raped the girl and then continued to communicate with her via cell phone for an undisclosed period of time thereafter.
Barrera-Navidad was born in El Salvador while less information is known about the other alleged rapist, Palacios-Amaya. ICE reports that a “final order of removal” was issued for Barrera-Navidad back in December of 2016. In 2014, authorities removed Palacios-Amaya from the U.S. but he returned at a later date.
Yesterday, WMAL’s Larry O’Connor interviewed Kevin Lewis, a reporter form WJLA, who broke this story. Lewis tells O’Connor that Montgomery County has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on immigration status and that County Executive Marc Elrich issued an executive order prohibiting any county employee from inquiring into the immigration status of any resident. Lewis also said that jail officials are not only forbidden from calling ICE officials regarding illegal alien inmates but also that ICE is forbidden from even entering the jail. There is no way of knowing whether these two monsters could have been removed from the U.S. before they raped this little girl.