FOX45: Bill would keep students accused of dangerous crimes out of Maryland schools
Work has begun in Annapolis to change Maryland laws after a FOX45 News investigation found an MS-13 gang member who was a murder suspect was allowed to enroll in Baltimore-area public high schools.
This comes as FOX45 continues to learn about the criminal investigation into Walter Martinez. Turns out, local police asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help in his case. But ICE said no.
Aberdeen Police arrested Martinez in January 2023 and charged him in the murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton six months earlier. At the time of his arrest, Martinez, then 17, was attending Edgewood High School in Harford County — even though, according to charging documents, he was an MS-13 gang member and murder suspect who was in the country illegally. And no one at the school was alerted about Martinez’s past.
Prior to enrolling at Edgewood, Child Protective Services had placed Martinez at a group home in Baltimore County, where he was enrolled at Lansdowne High School from Sept. 1, 2022, until Oct, 7 of that year, according to Baltimore County Public Schools.
“There needs to be something done,” Del. Nino Mangione, a Republican who represents Baltimore County, said last week on WCBM radio.
Mangione and others are drafting legislation in advance of the next legislative session, which begins in January, to give law enforcement officers the ability to prohibit students from attending school in-person if they are suspected of committing a felony. Under the draft bill, a student suspected of certain crimes would be educated outside of the classroom — such as through virtual learning — until an investigation is complete. Or, if the student does attend class in-person, the school would be made aware of any safety concerns, so the student body can be better protected.
FOX45 asked Gov. Wes Moore if he could support similar legislation.
“We will work with anybody to be able to make sure that our kids are safe in their schools, that our people are safe in their houses of worship, that people are safe where they go to work every single day,” said Moore. “And if adjustments to the law have to be made, we are going to be active participants and making sure that the right laws come on board that are keeping our people safe.”
When Kayla was murdered on July 27, 2022, police quickly identified Martinez as the main suspect. Since he was in the country illegally, and believed to be a known MS-13 gang member, Aberdeen Police requested that ICE hold Martinez until the investigation was complete. But ICE denied the request.
“That is my understanding of what transpired,” Alison Healey, the Harford County State’s Attorney, told FOX45. “My understanding is that because he was a juvenile, they were not willing to detain him.”
The 16-year-old, who entered the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, was then placed in the care of Child Protective Services, which allowed him to enroll in public school while the investigation was underway.
In a statement to FOX45, ICE explained, “Martinez was a juvenile who had not been charged with any crime. With no material change to the conditions of his immigration status, ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] Baltimore had no legal grounds for detaining Martinez at that time.”
“I think the best thing that the public can take from all of this is that this system all the way around from juvenile, from juvenile justice to immigration needs to work better,” Healey said. “We need to be holding juveniles more accountable and have better laws to be able to address situations like this.”
Martinez pleaded guilty in Harford County Circuit Court last month to murder in the first degree and was sentenced to 70 years in prison.
When asked if he thought it was a safety violation that put a student like that into a public school, Moore said: “Students need to feel safe inside of their classrooms. And when that is not happening, it has to be addressed.”