Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WHEATON – (WMAL) Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Navarro calls Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s statements following last week’s alleged rape at Rockville High School “appalling,” saying he is politicizing the event when focus should be on the victim and seeing her alleged attackers to justice.
“I find it really appalling to try to politicize a situation like this,” Navarro told reporters at an unrelated event in Wheaton Wednesday. “To somehow put out there these kinds of edicts which, again, try to paint all immigrants with a certain brush is really irresponsible.”
Hogan, in his statement earlier this week, brought up the county’s policies toward undocumented immigrants.
“I am outraged by the brutal and violent rape of a 14 year old girl in a Rockville public school. Our prayers are with her,” Hogan’s statement read. “The State of Maryland is calling on Montgomery County to immediately and fully cooperate with all federal authorities during the investigation of this heinous crime. The public has a right to know how something this tragic and unacceptable was allowed to transpire in a public school.”
Hogan later called out the school system for dragging its feet.
“My biggest concern is the Montgomery County School System– and their lack of cooperation and the lack of information they’ve been providing,” Hogan told Fox 5 DC. “Not only have they refused to provide any information to us, but they’ve refused to provide information to the state Board of Education, which specifically requested more information.”
Montgomery County officials continued to defend their immigration policies as policies that strike the right balance, despite last week’s assault.
“I don’t think there’s a failure of the policy,” County Executive Ike Leggett said. “Certainly, we’ll review our policies, but when you look at our policies, there was nothing that could’ve come to our attention in this situation that would’ve given us a heads up that we had some sort of danger, at least with these two people.”
The two suspects, 18-year-old Henry Sanchez and 17-year-old Jose Montano, both have pending cases in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE went as far as saying Sanchez was detained at the border in Texas by ICE agents and released, ordered to attend court on a pending date.
Officials expressed concern for the well-being of the immigrant community following rhetoric that has been spreading around the community since the incident.
“My office has received voicemails of people saying they wish my daughters would be raped, that I should be raped,” Navarro said. “It creates a lot of anxiety.”
Leggett agreed, continuing to support the county’s policy of only notifying ICE when an individual is charged with a criminal offense.
“Given the kind of rhetoric we’ve heard the past couple of days, some may become more fearful, and that hurts law enforcement across the board,” he said. “We should not throw all of our immigrants under the bus for the acts of potentially two young people who have done something terrible and unacceptable in our community.”
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