A Honduran national who made headlines over a 2019 hostage crisis resulting from leftist law-enforcement’s refusal to work with Trump administration immigration officials will no longer need to be deported for now.
Instead, 38-year-old Luis Analberto Pineda–Anchecta will live rent-free in America—at taxpayers’ expense—while serving a 20-year prison sentence, WBTV reported.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. sentenced Pineda-Anchecta to 240 months in prison with five years of supervised release to follow. He will be eligible for deportation upon release from federal custody.
Only days before his hours-long stand-off, which required SWAT team support, Pineda–Anchecta had been in police custody for threatening and assaulting his ex-girlfriend.
But he was released after the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office refused to honor a detainer request issued by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
During the sentencing, Conrad described the lead-up to the kidnapping as “a series of violent acts between the defendant and victim that escalated over time and culminated into this offense,” according to The Justice Department.
The avoidable crimes that nearly culminated in murder began on May 15, 2020, when Charlotte–Mecklenburg law enforcement officers arrested Pineda–Anchecta and charged him with assaulting a female and communicating threats.
Two days later, the county, operating under sanctuary city policies, released Pineda-Anchecta in defiance of an ICE detainer, which requested his transfer to federal custody for an immigration hearing.
Four days after his release, Pineda-Anchecta and another man, both wearing masks, approached the female assault victim as she walked to her car from her apartment in Charlotte.
The woman said she recognized Pineda-Anchecta despite the mask.
The two men grabbed her, forced a cloth into her mouth, tied a rope around her head to keep the cloth from moving, and then pushed her into a vehicle’s passenger-side seat. The other kidnapper abandoned the crime scene after forcing the woman into the car.
In the car, Pineda-Anchecta told her, “I love you and I’m going to kill you.”
Then he drove to Lancaster Highway, all the while squeezing the rope tightly on her head and mouth.
The car stopped at a wooded area on the side of the highway.
Still yanking the rope around her head, Pineda-Anchecta dragged the female victim out of the car and into the woods.
The woman fought back, escaped from his grip, and ran into the highway. Pineda-Anchecta ran away on foot.
Good Samaritans saw the woman and stopped to help her find safety.
Officers with the Charlotte–Mecklenburg Police Department searched Pineda–Anchecta’s vehicle after obtaining a warrant and found plastic rope and the woman’s phone.
Judge Conrad also factored into the 20-year sentence the illegal alien’s ultimate goal, writing that “this was not a mere kidnapping, but that the defendant intended to kill the victim.”
Pineda–Anchecta awaits transfer to federal Bureau of Prisons, which will place him in a federal prison.
When his sentence concludes, he is likely to be deported to Honduras, since he was previously convicted of illegal reentry and sentenced to seven months in prison.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden, though not to blame for the criminal’s actions, enacted policies that made possible the woman’s kidnapping and near-death experience.
McFadden ordered the county’s officers to stop checking the immigration status for people who came into the county jail.
He also prevented the county from honoring ICE’s detainers, whereby local authorities transfer illegal aliens into federal custody for immigration hearings and potential deportation proceedings.
