Senator Robert Menendez said he did not know an 18-year-old intern at his office was a sex offender and illegal immigrant until news broke of the intern’s arrest this afternoon.”I just heard … ” Menendez said on MSNBC during a prescheduled interview to discuss immigration reform. The Associated Press reported that federal authorities on Dec. 6 arrested Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, who came to the United States from Peru and allegedly overstayed his visa.
The report also said although the Department of Homeland Security was notified in October that the intern may have been eligible for deportation, it told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to hold off on the arrest until after Menendez’s November election. The AP cited an unnamed official involved with the investigation. Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, called the report that the agency delayed Sanchez’s arrest until after the election “categorically false.”
“ICE followed standard process in coordination with its federal partners and local prosecutors before taking appropriate enforcement action,” he said in an e-mailed statement.
Menendez, a Democrat, easily won re-election last month with 59 percent of the vote against his Republican challenger, state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Monmouth).
Menendez said his staff found out about the arrest Monday and immediately terminated Sanchez from the intern program. In a telephone interview, Menendez spokesman Tricia Enright said Sanchez had been an intern for about two months and that the senator did not know him. “What we know is we have a nonpaying college intern program. This young man applied to that process, got recommended by the school,” Menendez said on MSNBC. “We ask the status of all of those college interns … And we certainly wouldn’t have known through any background checks, since he is a minor, about any sex-offender status.”
Sanchez committed the offense in 2010 but because he was prosecuted as a juvenile, the exact charge and court records are not publicly available, according to the AP. The Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office — which first told Homeland Security about Sanchez — did not return a phone call seeking comment.
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