MORRISVILLE, N.C. — When the Department of Homeland Security surged federal agents into North Carolina last November, they pledged to “target criminal aliens” and go after “the worst of the worst — including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles.”
But in one case reviewed by Raw Story, federal immigration authorities received a tip about a 24-year-old Guatemalan national suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old girl — and they repeatedly missed the opportunity to detain him, despite him being in police custody.
Federal immigration authorities appear to have learned about Maynor Godinez-Mendez when a detective with the Fuquay-Varina Police Department contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division. When Godinez-Mendez was interviewed following his arrest on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a federal Homeland Security Investigations agent was present and translated.
Even after Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, received a notification from a detention officer that he was in a local jail, they still failed to take Godinez-Mendez into custody, and he was released on his own recognizance four hours later.
The day after Godinez-Mendez’s release from jail, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Charlotte’s Web.” Border Patrol “stormed” North Carolina’s largest city “in unmarked SUVs and masks, sweeping up hundreds of people,” as described in the Charlotte Observer. In the midst of the five-day blitz, the operation briefly expanded into the booming area about 150 miles to the northeast surrounding the state capitol of Raleigh, which includes Fuquay-Varina.
Chafed by the agency’s fumbled response involving Godinez-Mendez, an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations supervisor tasked a team with apprehending the suspect. But based on faulty intelligence, ICE staked out the wrong house.
During an arrest operation on Dec. 2, 2025, agents in unmarked SUVs converged on a different man and blocked him at the entrance of a shopping center in Morrisville. When the man tried to back up and drive away, an agent rammed his car through a hedgerow, spun the vehicle around, and pushed it into a parked car.
The driver was not Godinez-Mendez, but rather another Guatemalan. His name was Milton Roblero.
When the agents took Roblero into custody, they determined that he had an outstanding order for deportation. Federal prosecutors charged him with forcibly assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and willfully damaging government property.
Roblero’s lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, while questioning whether the agent who rammed his vehicle “violated ICE’s own policy and regulations restricting offensive driving techniques.” The shopping center includes a daycare, and the motion contends that ICE policy prohibits using offensive driving techniques “in school zones where children are present or going to or from school or where the danger to the public outweighs the enforcement benefit.”
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The government did not directly address the question of whether ICE violated its policies, only saying in a court filing that the agents’ use of a vehicle for an administrative arrest was “appropriate.” But a filing in federal court on Monday indicates the government agreed to plead down the charges to a misdemeanor for impeding federal immigration officers’ traffic interdiction efforts. The agreement notes that Roblero will be removed to Guatemala following resolution of federal charges.
Andreina Malki, the defense manager for the immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC, told Raw Story Roblero’s arrest fits a pattern of unsafe activity by ICE.
“They used unmarked vehicles that don’t have any indication that they might be ICE,” she said. “If you’re a person driving, and unmarked cars try to block you in, you would probably try to leave. The fact that he got rammed and then got a charge for using his vehicle as a weapon — the story doesn’t add up. It’s not clear to the people being stopped who’s stopping them.”
Lindsay Williams, an ICE spokesperson, told Raw Story he couldn’t speak to the specifics of Roblero’s arrest.
A missing person case leads to a call to the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division
The circumstances that led to Roblero’s arrest began three weeks earlier with a missing person case that developed into a kidnapping and rape investigation.
Police in Fuquay-Varina, a town on the southwestern fringe of Raleigh, received a frantic phone call from a woman who reported that her 16-year-old daughter was missing (Raw Story is withholding the girl’s name because she is a juvenile). According to the police investigative report obtained through federal court filings, the daughter had texted: “Mommy and Daddy, I’m sorry for doing this to you, and well, I’m not coming home. I love you all very much.” The mother’s calls went straight to voicemail.
After interviewing the girl’s younger cousins, the police were able to get the name of a former boyfriend, then a residential address, and ultimately a description of a vehicle registered to the address. Using a law enforcement database, the police determined that the vehicle, a 2012 Hyundai Accent, had been repeatedly observed at an apartment complex in Cary, a nearby city.
Two Fuquay-Varina police officers went to the apartment complex the day after the 16-year-old girl had disappeared. As the officers were speaking with two females, the 16-year-old girl walked out of the apartment. She told the officers that the owner of the Hyundai was “Maynor,” and that he was in the car with another man named “William” when they picked her up.
Initially, the 16-year-old girl told the police that she had run away because of problems at home, and that nothing happened to her at the apartment. She said she had only watched TV and slept.
But on Nov. 13, two days after the 16-year-old girl was returned to her family, she told Cpl. Cassaundra Sullivan that William Godinez-Ramirez had called her and told her to go to an Indian grocery store. When she got into the car, according to Sullivan’s notes, Godinez-Ramirez told the 16-year-old girl to throw her phone out the window. She refused, and Godinez-Ramirez reportedly got out of the car, opened her door, grabbed the phone and threw it away. The girl told the officer that another man, Maynor Godinez-Mendez, and his wife were also in the car. They drove to a car wash, switched cars, and drove on to the apartment in Cary.
Summarizing what Sullivan learned from her interview, Detective Salvatore Fundaro wrote that the 16-year-old girl “reported that Godinez-Ramirez raped her” and “also reported that Godinez-Ramirez told her that he was going to kill her family if she didn’t leave with him.”
Fundaro consulted with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, and he said he was advised to keep investigating before charging with rape and kidnapping, but he swore out warrants for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for both Godinez-Ramirez and Godinez-Mendez.
The federal authorities appear to have learned about the investigation of the two men on Nov. 12. That day, Fundaro wrote, he contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division for assistance with the case. What raised his suspicions was that the 16-year-old girl had told her parents that she was going to a job, but her employer told the detective she hadn’t shown up for work for the past three months.
On the same day, a federal immigration officer signed a Department of Homeland Security administrative arrest warrant for Godinez-Mendez.
Accompanied by the Homeland Security Investigations agent, Fundaro interviewed Godinez-Mendez at the Morrisville Police Department. Godinez-Mendez “could not offer a logical reason as to why they switched vehicles,” Fundaro wrote. The detective asked if the reason was “because they knew they had committed a crime and wanted to avoid apprehension,” but Godinez-Mendez denied that.
Susan Weis, a spokesperson for the town of Fuquay-Varina said she was unable to comment because the case remains under investigation. The town also cannot “comment on another agency’s procedures,” she said.
Godinez-Mendez wound up spending six hours in the Wake County Detention Center, but ICE did not respond to a detainer inquiry from the jail or take the opportunity to place him in custody.
“Immigration warrants take a back seat to criminal charges,” Williams, the ICE spokesman, told Raw Story. “If he was arrested for something serious, we would let that process play out.”
Williams’ statement appears to be at odds with the bellicose language in the DHS press release, issued the day after Godinez-Mendez’s release, that takes aim at “criminal aliens” and “sanctuary politicians.”
“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” then-Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “We are surging law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and [former] Secretary [Kristi] Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”
Only slightly more than half the people detained by federal immigration agents during “Operation Charlotte’s Web” had a criminal record, according to data recently released by the Deportation Data Project.
Asked to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the administration’s rhetoric about targeting the most serious criminals and the imperative to let charges play out in state courts, Williams said: “We’re going to deport him, whether it’s now or seven years from now. We ideally want folks to be held accountable for their crimes. The deportation order doesn’t expire. The system will take effect.”
‘I want to get hands on him’
The morning of Godinez-Mendez’s release from the Wake County Detention Center, an immigration agent identified in emails obtained by Raw Story by the initials “CD” forwarded the detainer inquiry to an ICE supervisor.
“Here is the lead you forwarded to us but not in custody,” the agent wrote.
The supervisor, identified only by the initials “SC,” forwarded the message to another agent.
“Biometrics did not hit as expected,” the supervisor wrote. “I wish we had a heads up. Magistrate bonded him out last night. He was there for 6 hours. They only charged him with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“I want to get hands on him,” the message continued. “What can you provide to assist? His booking record has an address in Morrisville. Work location? Vehicle info?”
On Nov 29, an ICE agent conducted surveillance on the house in Morrisville, observing through binoculars from a distance of 200 yards away. The agent watched an individual identified as “Target 1” leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic, and also leave the house and get into a white truck. It’s unclear who the agent actually saw.
After the ICE agent witnessed a man leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic on Dec. 2, he radioed the arrest team — eight agents, including three on loan from Homeland Security Investigations. Given Godinez-Mendez’s “pattern of life,” the agents anticipated that he would drive to the nearby shopping center.
But the man they arrested was not Godinez-Mendez.
None of the federal court documents or local police investigative reports reviewed by Raw Story implicate Milton Roblero, the man arrested by ICE on Dec. 2, in the kidnapping and rape investigation
About three weeks later, the real suspect was arrested on state criminal charges of felony conspiracy and felonious restraint. On the same day he was booked, for the second time, in the Wake County Detention Center, a magistrate issued a 48-hour hold to allow ICE to take him into custody.
ICE did not respond. On Dec. 28, he was released on a $25,000 bond.
Following his indictment in February, Godinez-Mendez was finally deported by Homeland Security Investigations, Melanie Shekita, a Wake County prosecutor, told Raw Story.
