A man who police said terrorized a tony Washington neighborhood last year by groping women in broad daylight was deported Wednesday by the Obama administration.
Oscar Mauricio Cornejo Pena, 31, an illegal immigrant living in the U.S., was sent back to his home country of Nicaragua after he served jail time on four convictions of misdemeanor sexual assault.
“Cornejo has proven to be a danger to the community and it is ICE’s top priority in the interest of public safety to ensure his removal from the United States,” said M. Yvonne Evans, director of deportations for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement’s Washington office.
Police said Cornejo rode his bicycle past women and groped them.
“I didn’t see him coming. He just reached up my skirt and fondled me, and then biked away while laughing,” one of the victims in Dupont Circle, Liz Gorman, told WUSA-TV (Channel 9) last year.
Cornejo pleaded guilty to four charges and was sentenced late last year to 180 days in jail, though half of that sentence was suspended.
But ICE had put a detainer on Cornejo, meaning that when he was released from D.C. custody he was sent over to ICE to enter deportation proceedings.
The deportation comes as Congress and President Obama debate how to revamp the immigration system, and as the Obama administration is under fire for its own deportation decisions.
ICE agents say the administration has issued rules tying their hands on whom they can deport. The administration says it is focusing its efforts on the most serious criminal offenders.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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