High school rape fuels Trump-era debate on immigration

WASHINGTON: A rape at a Washington area high school has drawn intense scrutiny as part of the immigration debate launched under President Donald Trump, since the two alleged attackers are Latinos who entered the United States illegally.

Under normal circumstances, a case like this would not make national headlines. But these are not normal times in America.

The attack feeds perfectly into the Trump narrative that the US has porous borders and does not give priority to native-born Americans, and that unauthorised immigrants mean more and more violent crime.

Jose Montano, 17, and Henry Sanchez Milian, 18, are accused of brutally raping a 14-year-old classmate in a bathroom during school hours. They have been arrested and are in custody as they wait to go before a judge.

The rape took place last week at a public high school in Rockville, Maryland, a Washington suburb in Montgomery County, which is strongly pro-Democratic and 76% of the county’s voters went with Hillary Clinton in the election.

News reports say Sanchez Milian was born in Guatemala and in August 2016 crossed the Rio Grande separating Mexico from the United States, as do many Latinos seeking to escape poverty and find a better life in the United States. He was picked up by border control agents.

A few days later, he was let go to join his father, who was living in Maryland while the youth waited to appear before an immigration judge.

That hearing has not even been scheduled yet, because of a huge backlog in the courts: half a million cases involving unauthorised immigrants waiting to see if they can stay or will be deported.

An estimated 11 million people live in the country illegally, most of them Mexicans.