Hispanic politician employed a Hispanic illegal alien who was also a sex offender

Sen. Robert Menendez employed as an unpaid intern in his Senate office an illegal immigrant who was a registered sex offender, now under arrest by immigration authorities. The Homeland Security Department instructed federal agents not to arrest him until after Election Day 2012, a U.S. official involved in the case said. A Homeland Security spokesman, Peter Boogaard, said that it was "categorically false" that the department delayed the arrest of Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, 18, until after the election. Sanchez, an immigrant from Peru, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in front of his home in New Jersey on December 6, 2012. Sanchez, who entered the country on a now-expired visitor visa from Peru, is facing deportation and remains in custody. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of Sanchez's immigration case. Menendez, D-N.J., who advocates aggressively for pro-immigration policies, was re-elected in November 2012 with 58% of the vote. The prosecutor's office in Hudson County, N.J., said that Sanchez was found to have violated the law in 2010 and subsequently required to register as a sex offender. The exact charge was unclear because Sanchez was prosecuted as a juvenile and those court records are not publicly accessible. The prosecutor's office has confirmed that Sanchez registered as a sex offender, although his name does not appear on the public registry. Authorities in Hudson County notified ICE agents in early October 2012 that they suspected Sanchez was an illegal immigrant who was a registered sex offender and who may be eligible to be deported. ICE agents in New Jersey notified superiors at the Homeland Security Department because they considered it a potentially high profile arrest, and DHS instructed them not to arrest Sanchez until after the November election, one U.S. official said. ICE officials complained that the delay was inappropriate, but DHS directed them several times not to act, the official said. It was not immediately clear why federal immigration authorities would not have been notified sooner about Sanchez's status. During discussions about when and where to arrest Sanchez, the U.S. reviewed Sanchez's application for permission to stay in the country as part of Barack Obama's policy to allow up to 1.7 million young illegal immigrants avoid deportation and get permission to work for up to two years. As a sex offender, he would not have been eligible. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, notified Sanchez of that shortly before his arrest, one official said. During the final weeks of President George W. Bush's administration, ICE was criticized for delaying the arrest of Barack Obama's aunt, who had ignored an immigration judge's order to leave the country several years earlier after her asylum claim was denied. She subsequently won the right to stay in the United States after an earlier deportation order. In that case, the Homeland Security Department had imposed an unusual directive days before the 2008 election requiring high-level approval before federal agents nationwide could arrest fugitive immigrants including Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama's late father. The directive from ICE expressed concerns about "negative media or congressional interest," according to a copy of that directive. The department lifted the immigration order weeks later.