Ingmar Guandique, the 29-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador sentenced to 60 years in prison earlier this month for the murder of former congressional intern Chandra Levy, had a history of violent attacks on women pre-dating his unlawful entry into the United States via the Texas border — as thousands like him continue to do every year. It’s a one-way ticket to America with no questions asked. According to U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen’s sentencing memorandum filed with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on Feb. 8, “the government learned, and then confirmed, that [Guandique] fled El Salvador because he was suspected of attacking a woman at knife point on an isolated trail in the village of Cooperativa San Jacinto” on June 13, 1999 — two years before Levy’s murder. Federal agents eventually tracked down the victim, identified only as “Gloria,” who said she was walking on an isolated dirt trail when she spotted a young man armed with a knife hiding in the bushes behind her, “crouching slightly off the trail on a mildly elevated hill.” When he realized she had spotted him, he started running after her.
” ‘Gloria’ fled in terror. She realized that the young man was clearly gaining on her and turned around just as he reached her. At that point, the young man pushed ‘Gloria’ down to the ground and stabbed her between her shoulder blades, injuring her spinal cord.
“The young man then ran off,” leaving his victim bleeding on the ground for “approximately two hours until some men on horseback found her and summoned help.”
The extent of “Gloria’s” injuries were so severe that she had to be hospitalized for a month, “and to this day needs the assistance of a cane in order to walk.” She understandably remains “very fearful.”
She also told investigators that Guandique, whom she knew as a child, was also suspected of raping and murdering another local woman near a creek — a creepy precursor of Levy’s murder in Rock Creek Park on May 1, 2001, and Guandique’s attacks on three other female joggers.
The seventh-grade dropout and MS-13 gang member, whom the U.S. attorney rightly considers a “grave danger to the community,” was sent to the U.S. by his family because “they were concerned that the victim’s family was seeking to retaliate.”
We don’t find out what happened then because the last 43 pages of Machen’s 61-page sentencing memo are redacted. On the same day it was filed, Machen also filed a motion to seal Guandique’s file. Why? What exactly does the U.S. attorney not want the public to know about Chandra Levy’s killer?
Immigration and Customs Enforcement also refuses to release a copy of the 35-page report prepared at the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after another illegal immigrant, Carlos Martinelly-Montano, killed a nun and critically injured two others while allegedly driving drunk in Prince William County last August.
Judicial Watch sued ICE after the agency missed several deadlines to release the document under the Freedom of Information Act. On Feb. 11, the watchdog group received a letter from ICE informing them that the draft report “will be withheld in its entirety” in accordance with the law’s “deliberative process privilege” that shields the bureaucrats who failed to deport Martinelly-Montano when he was turned over to ICE after two prior DUI convictions.
Why is the federal government still not coming clean about criminal aliens who have killed and maimed Americans? More to the point, who are these coverups really protecting?
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
