Washingtontimes.com
Sniper suspect John Lee Malvo, arrested in December as an illegal alien, avoided deportation to his native Jamaica when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service overruled a Border Patrol recommendation that the teenager be sent home.
Mr. Malvo, 17, and his mother, Uma Sceon James, were arrested Dec. 19 by Border Patrol agents in Bellingham, Wash. After being told by Mrs. James that she and her son were stowaways on a ship that arrived in Miami, the Border Patrol set into motion a recommendation for immediate deportation, law-enforcement sources said.
That recommendation, however, was overturned by the INS when Mrs. James told a contradictory story about how she and her son were not stowaways but had been smuggled into the United States.
"Somebody dropped the ball here," said one Border Patrol agent familiar with the case. "We did our job. He should have been returned home. Because he wasn't, some people paid a very high price."
Within weeks of his release, Mr. Malvo was on the road with John Allen Muhammad, 41, identified by police and prosecutors as the suspect who masterminded a series of sniper attacks in the Washington area that killed 10 persons and wounded three.
Posted by Suzanne at October 29, 2002