An illegal immigrant landed in a sticky situation this week after he fled ICE officers in the Houston area and got stuck on the rooftop sign of a business.
Marlon Odir Gomez Hernandez, 29, ran into a laundromat to try to get away from the officers. He ended up climbing through ceiling panels and onto the building’s roof, then jumped down onto the large letters spelling UNIVERSAL — apparently the washateria’s name — that adorned the building’s facade.
Photos show him splayed precariously, with his feet resting on the letter N and his head on the letter E.
Officers eventually ushered him to safety and placed him under arrest, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
The agency said Mr. Gomez, from El Salvador, was arrested in that country three years ago on extortion charges and was connected to the MS-13 gang. He later managed to sneak into the U.S.
ICE said its officers encountered him during a “targeted enforcement operation” in the Houston area on Monday.
Bret Bradford, head of ICE’s deportation office in Houston, said the flight “put the local community in danger.”
“Unfortunately, this has become a daily occurrence for our officers here in Houston, thanks to the violent rhetoric being spewed by elected officials encouraging illegal aliens to resist enforcement of the same laws they established,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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