Chicago City Wire

Absent a sanctuary law in Chicago, the Ecuadorian national charged in the Jan. 26 murder of Norwood Park resident George Levin would likely have been in federal custody at the time of the murder.

Two weeks before the murder, Geiderwuin Bello Morales, 21, was arrested on charges of assaulting a victim under the age of 13; he reportedly attempted to lure her and another girl into a car.

Morales was released a day after his arrest, police reports indicate.

Suspects in the murder of George Levin. | X / Libs of TikTok

Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, a sanctuary law, prohibited police from notifying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that Morales was in the country illegally.

His arrest “certainly should have been grounds for detention and deportation,” a Chicago Police Department source told Chicago City Wire.

“Of course, it’s impossible to say if that would have prevented the murder, but he would not have been part of it,” the source, who asked not to be identified, said.

Lack of cooperation between local police and federal immigration officials has resulted in preventable tragedies not just in Chicago but in sanctuary jurisdictions across the country, according to Don Rosenberg, president of Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC).

Rosenberg recounted the 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle, the 32-year-old killed by illegal Jose Inez Garcia- Zarate, a Mexican national, while she was walking on a San Francisco pier with her father.

Zarate “was incarcerated in a prison in California,” Rosenberg wrote in an email to Chicago City Wire, “ready to be released when his prison term ended in 2015. ICE was notified, and a time was set to make the transfer. Per policy, ICE looked at Zarate’s record and found an open arrest warrant in San Francisco. It was a minor pot charge, so they called the SF sheriff to see if they wanted him. The sheriff said yes and sent a car to pick him up. ICE filed a new detainer for Zarate after SF was finished with him.”

“They held him for a few weeks,” he continued, “ignored the detainer and then released him. A few weeks later, he killed Kate Steinle."

Rosenberg said that the San Fransisco Sherriff at the time, Ross Mirkarimi, who released Garcia-Zarate was the same one who released his son’s killer after serving just 43 days.

Rosenberg’s son, Drew, was killed in 2010 by a Honduran national driving without a license.  

In 2017, a jury found Garcia-Zarate not guilty of second-degree murder but guilty of possession of a firearm by a felon.

In March of last year, deportation officers with Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Phoenix removed Garcia-Zarate who had been deported on six previous occasions, according to a statement from ICE.

“Garcia-Zarate has been removed from the United States six times, in June 1994, April 1997, January 1998, February 1998, March 2006 and July 2009," the statement said. "He has an extensive criminal record that includes multiple convictions related to drug possession, violating terms of his probation and drug trafficking, which resulted in approximately five years in prison.”