COLUMBIA, South Carolina — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested five people in Columbia and Charleston whose criminal histories include convictions for voluntary manslaughter, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking resulting in death, and trafficking cocaine, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement released on Thursday, October 29.
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The five arrests were made in October — the most recent on October 28 in Columbia, the state capital — and DHS presented them as the latest examples from South Carolina in its nationwide immigration-enforcement campaign. Three of the five were arrested in Columbia and two in Charleston, the state's port city. The department described all five as illegal aliens, which is DHS's own term for people it says are in the United States without lawful status; Awaaz Punjab attributes that characterisation to DHS in every case below.
Source: DHS via EIN News
The five arrests, case by case
Estela Ruiz-Gomez, a national of Guatemala, was arrested by ICE in Columbia on October 28 — the most recent arrest in the list. According to DHS, her criminal history includes a conviction for voluntary manslaughter. DHS did not give the date or court of that conviction, or any further detail about the underlying case, in its release.
Luis Osorio, a national of El Salvador, was arrested by ICE in Columbia on October 27. According to DHS, his criminal history includes a conviction for trafficking cocaine — 28 grams or more. Raulier Lopez-Rivas, a national of Cuba, was arrested by ICE in Columbia on October 13. DHS said his criminal history includes convictions for three counts of burglary, robbery of a business with a weapon, burglary of a banking-type institution, possession of burglary tools, possession of stolen property, damaging property, larceny, and driving under the influence of liquor.
Juan Gomez Santiago, a national of Mexico, was arrested by ICE in Charleston on October 9. DHS said his criminal history includes a conviction for second-degree assault and battery and an arrest for second-degree domestic violence — the department listed the domestic-violence matter as an arrest, not a conviction. Juan Bravo, a national of Colombia, was arrested by ICE in Charleston on October 1, the earliest arrest in the list. According to DHS, his criminal history includes a conviction for conspiracy to commit hostage-taking resulting in death.
What DHS Secretary Mullin said
"The patriots of ICE are hard at work every single day, undoing the damage from four long years of Biden's open borders," DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in the statement. "Our ICE law enforcement officers are arresting and removing illegal aliens from all across the country, including South Carolina, where they've arrested killers, violent assailants, burglars, and drug traffickers. Arresting and deporting illegal aliens is how we protect our communities, save lives, and make America safe again." That is the administration's stated position, attributed to the secretary; DHS did not publish case documents alongside the release.
Background: what an ICE arrest does — and does not — decide
ICE is the enforcement agency inside DHS, and its Enforcement and Removal Operations officers make immigration arrests. An immigration arrest is a civil enforcement step, not a new criminal charge: the person is normally taken into ICE custody and placed in removal proceedings before an immigration judge, unless a prior final removal order already allows ICE to carry out deportation. In this release DHS did not say, for any of the five, whether a final order of removal already exists, whether they had completed criminal sentences, or when any removal might happen — so none of that should be assumed from the announcement alone.
This is also not the first South Carolina list DHS has published this month. On October 21 the department released a separate South Carolina statement naming a different group of people arrested in the state, with histories DHS described as including arson, aggravated assault with a gun and criminal street-gang activity. The October 29 release names none of those people — it is a new set of five arrests, presented by DHS as the most recent examples from the state.
The crimes listed for Ruiz-Gomez, Osorio, Lopez-Rivas and Bravo are described by DHS as convictions already on their records, and one item for Gomez Santiago is described only as an arrest. The October ICE arrests themselves are immigration-enforcement actions — they are not verdicts in new criminal cases.
Why it matters in South Carolina — and for our readers
Columbia sits at the junction of Interstates 26, 20 and 77, and Charleston — linked to Columbia by I-26 — is one of the U.S. East Coast's major container ports, with freight moving on I-26 and I-95 through the state every day. Punjabi and other South Asian truckers who run those corridors, and families travelling I-95 through South Carolina, are seeing this enforcement at the state level, city by city, not only in national announcements from Washington. The practical point from this release is narrow and verifiable: ICE says it is actively making custodial arrests in Columbia and Charleston of people with serious prior convictions, and DHS is publicising them state by state.
What happens next
What happens next for the five will be decided case by case in ICE custody and, where they apply, in immigration court: DHS has given no court dates, no removal dates and no facility names in this release. Awaaz Punjab will follow whether DHS or ICE publishes follow-up information — such as final removal orders or removals carried out — for any of the five named here, and will update readers if the department releases case-level documents.