ICE: Bailed Uber rape suspect still on run

A previously deported Uber driver now facing a rape rap is still in the wind, according to federal immigration authorities who sought to detain him but didn’t after a state judge released him on light bail.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said yesterday they still haven’t located Luis Baez, 34, three days after he was released on a meager $2,500 bail — a small fraction of the $100,000 prosecutors were requesting — on charges he raped a Boston College student who hailed his ride last fall.

Baez, who had previously been deported to the Dominican Republican in 2010, was said to be using a fake name when he was driving for Uber in September and picked up the student, whom authorities say he took to a parking lot and other sites and raped her three times even as she was vomiting and fighting back.

The case, and the timeline around it, have raised several questions, including when local authorities contacted the feds, who prosecutors said were “seeking a detainer against him” before Judge Mary Beth Heffernan set bail in Newton District Court on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan, whose office is prosecuting the case, declined to release more information yesterday because it’s an “open case.” An ICE spokesman also didn’t provide details to questions about the events “leading to the detainer.”

Reached by phone, Baez’s attorney, John Benzan, asked a Herald reporter if he had written the front-page story detailing the case yesterday, before saying he wasn’t commenting and hanging up.

Heffernan cut arguments in court short before Baez’s attorney could even counter the prosecution’s $100,000 bail and GPS-monitoring demand.

Prosecutors told her that Baez was on the radar of the Boston police gang unit because of his “previous involvement” in the Mozart Street Gang, according to a court recording of the 17-minute arraignment.

Heffernan, a Gov. Deval Patrick appointee and former public safety secretary in his administration, had pressed for more information about the prior deportation, and Assistant District Attorney Raquel Frisardi told her federal authorities had confirmed Baez’s immigration history and status.

Benzan had previously said Baez was brought to the U.S. when he was 3 years old, but couldn’t obtain citizenship like his mother, father and siblings. He said Baez has two children and one more on the way, and has known about the rape allegations since September but never fled before.