News about recent activity of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been making headlines in recent days, with one of those headlines coming out of a mountain town in Colorado.

According to the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office, local law enforcement arrested Juan Hose Avila Hernandez, a 23-year-old Mexican resident, in Buena Vista on February 7 due to multiple felony warrants out of Oklahoma. The warrants were reported to be for four counts of raping juveniles.

The local involvement in the case started on the same day of the arrest, when the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office received a call from ICE related to Hernandez potentially being present and working in the area. Thanks to the information provided by ICE, sheriff’s deputies were able to locate Hernandez later that day, arresting him without incident. He was booked into jail and then released to ICE.

“Our deputies did a great job locating Hernandez so quickly and assuring he could not harm anyone in our community,” said Chaffee County Sheriff Andy Rohrich. “Hernandez was listed as a sexually violent predator. As stated before, we will assist ICE when they are searching for undocumented immigrants that are wanted for violations of law other than just their legal status of being in the United States.”

All suspects in criminal cases are to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

According to a report from Oregon Public Broadcasting, “more than 8,000 people have been arrested in immigration enforcement actions since Trump’s January 20 inauguration.” During the end of January, ICE was averaging 787 arrests per day compared to 311 that were arrested daily during a 12-month stretch ending on September 30, 2024 when Joe Biden was present.

STAY INFORMED: Get free Colorado news with our daily newsletter (Click here)