U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an illegal immigrant mother who allegedly drove a car involved in an Arizona rollover crash that killed her 9-year-old daughter and injured three other children, Fox News Digital has learned.
Police suspected that Mexican national Brenda Liliana Rivera-Estrada, 30, was impaired during the April 12 crash that ejected her daughter from a vehicle and injured two boys, 11 and 3, and a baby girl, 1. Her daughter reportedly was sharing a seatbelt with her sibling.
Rivera-Estrada is accused of multiple felony offenses tied to manslaughter and child abuse and was held on a $100,000 bond, but county prosecutors did not file charges, and she was released from local custody before being taken into ICE custody on an immigration detainer.
“The identification and arrest of Brenda Liliana Rivera-Estrada by ICE underscores the importance of the Criminal Alien Program and highlights the public safety efforts undertaken by officers with Enforcement and Removal Operations,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Phoenix Deputy Field Office Director Alejandro Almeida told Fox News in a statement.
“Her fate now rests with the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, and any available administrative or judicial appellate recourse, which will determine her eligibility to remain in the United States,” Almeida added.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said her office “did not decline to prosecute,” and that the case was “furthered for additional investigation, including getting DUI lab results and completing a collision analysis.”
“I have said this many times: we have one chance to get this right,” Mitchell said. “Complex cases like this routinely take time to gather the evidence needed to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
ICE officers first encountered Rivera-Estrada at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Intake, Transfer and Release facility on the day she was booked April 16. ICE said it maintains a presence at the facility and interviews those booked there to identify illegal immigrants and removable criminal aliens.
The agency said that work is part of ICE’s Criminal Alien Program, which is designed to transfer removable criminal aliens into federal immigration custody in a controlled setting.
Rivera-Estrada allegedly entered the United States through Nogales, Arizona, on Feb. 14, 2009, as a nonimmigrant border crosser with authorization to remain for up to 30 days, according to ICE. Officials said she remained in the country beyond that period in violation of federal immigration law.
She will remain in ICE custody pending immigration proceedings, according to officials.
“The suspect chose to get in a vehicle where she was allegedly under the influence of marijuana,” a prosecutor told Fox 10 Phoenix. “Multiple witnesses stated that she was driving above the posted speed limit, which was 65.”
Arizona troopers reportedly smelled the odor of marijuana at the crash scene, and officials said Rivera-Estrada admitted in a court hearing that she smoked marijuana, Fox 10 reported.
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