A Honduran illegal immigrant has been charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in Iowa, Fox News Digital has confirmed.
It’s the latest instance of a crime allegedly committed by someone in the country illegally.
Junior Manuel Dubon Benitez, 18, was charged with sexual abuse in the second degree, according to Iowa court documents obtained by Fox. The incident allegedly happened in February and involved “sexual abuse upon Jane Doe, a 12-year-old child.”
The documents were first reported by the Washington Examiner, which reported that Benitez pleaded guilty in Iowa District Court in Black Hawk County May 14.
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Migrants are processed by the U.S. Border Patrol near Jacumba Hot Springs after crossing the U.S.-Mexican border June 13, 2024, in San Diego. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News Digital Dubon Benitez is a Honduran national who illegally entered via Hidalgo, Texas, in April 2022. ICE said it has issued a detainer with the prison, which is a request that, upon his release, he be turned over to the agency so it can place him in removal proceedings.
The charges come amid an ongoing crisis at the southern border that has become one of the top political issues in the country, in part, due to a number of high-profile crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants.
Two Venezuelan illegal immigrants were charged last month with capital murder in the death of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston. Authorities said she was “lured” under a bridge in Houston before she was tied up and killed.
The arrests came the same week as the arrest of an Ecuadorian national in the U.S. illegally for a broad daylight sex attack in which police said a machete-wielding man raped a 13-year-old girl at a New York City park.
Police also announced that an illegal migrant from El Salvador had been arrested for the murder of Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother of five. The crimes are part of a broader wave of crimes across the U.S. committed by those in the country illegally.
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ICE agents conduct an enforcement operation in the U.S. interior June 2, 2022. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
The issue was highlighted in the presidential debate last week, with former President Trump blaming President Biden for the crimes.
“They’re killing our people in New York and California and every state in the union because we don’t have borders anymore. Every state is now a border,” Trump said. “And because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in, and they’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen.
“We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime. They’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before.”
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Biden pushed back, accusing Trump of torpedoing bipartisan reform efforts for political purposes.
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“This bipartisan deal — more fentanyl machines to be able to detect drugs, more numbers of agents, more numbers of all the people at the border. And when we had that deal done, he went … he called his Republican colleagues, said, ‘Don’t do it. It’s going to hurt me politically.’ He never argued it’s not a good bill. It’s a really good bill.”