An alleged crack-smoking, sexual-predator migrant wanted by ICE was allowed to flee through a back door of a Manhattan courthouse — infuriating federal agents, The Post has learned.
Gerardo Miguel Mora, 45, was arrested Thursday for
shoplifting and possession of stolen property after allegedly snatching $130 in items from an H&M display case in Midtown that day, court records show.
Mora, whose country of origin was not disclosed, was collared on the Upper West Side on Jan. 7 for possession of alleged crack cocaine, according to a criminal complaint. That case is pending in court.
In 2011, Mora was busted for
attempted rape and strangulation after he allegedly followed a 21-year-old woman home in Midtown, choked her and tried to remove her clothes, police sources said.
He was stopped by a bystander who heard the woman’s cries and came to her aid, holding Mora down until cops arrived, the sources said.
He was presumably deported after that, and was off the radar for 12 years. But in 2023 he was back in the US and arrested for showing a false ID.
Federal authorities had been
looking for Mora on a criminal arrest warrant under a section of the US code that concerns “reentry of removed aliens,” law enforcement sources said.
But on Thursday in a court hearing on desk appearance tickets, the judge let Mora waltz out of the courtroom, sources said.
The shoplifting charge itself was not bail eligible, but Judge Sheridan Jack-Browne, a Democrat who won a special election last year in Brooklyn, would have had the federal arrest warrant, two sources told The Post.
The warrant is actually put in a folder for the judge to peruse on the bench.
“Everything was sent over” to the courthouse by ICE, a federal law enforcement source said.
But instead of handing him over to waiting ICE agents, Mora was allowed to simply slip out the back door of Manhattan Criminal Court, law enforcement sources said.
“They refused to hand him over,” the irate fed said. “They let him out the back to avoid ICE.”
ICE agents realized Mora had been released, and chased him down outside, a source said.
Mora’s now in federal custody. The Department of Justice could prosecute Mora, deport him or both.
Because it’s a sanctuary city, New York doesn’t work with the feds when it comes to immigration enforcement. But allegations of actively obstructing the feds are unusual.
The feds have recently delivered warrants for three other criminal migrants that haven’t been honored, law enforcement sources said.
“Unfortunately, that’s what we do now,” said a longtime NYPD officer dismayed by the city’s policy of icing out ICE. “We don’t acknowledge any federal anything. I don’t think that’s right. They came into the country the wrong way and they committed a crime.
“They should be deported,” the cop added. “We should be able to hand them over to the feds.”
In some case the feds have gone after judges that it feels have obstructed ICE operations.
Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan faces up to five years in prison after she was convicted of felony obstruction last year for helping an undocumented immigrant evade ICE agents in her courtroom.
Jack-Browne and the state Office of Court Administration did not return requests for comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not comment.
