By Karen Anderson

    BOSTON (WCVB) -- She was barely a teenager, just 13 years old, when she had to decide whether she wanted prosecutors to press charges against the man she said repeatedly raped her.

It would take a few years, but eventually, she found the courage to go forward with the charges. Elmer Sola was arrested and eventually indicted on multiple counts of child rape.

"I would do anything to protect another child," the teen, now 16, told 5 Investigates.

She told 5 Investigates she wanted to speak out because she was robbed of the chance to speak in court, denied the opportunity to face the man she says sexually abused her for seven years after Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and deported him to El Salvador before the criminal case was resolved.

"I wanted to show this person that they no longer had control over me and that I was no longer that little terrified girl that would do whatever he wanted at the snap of his fingers," she said. "He could hurt another kid to be allowed to go free and hurt someone else. That thought devastates me because I've tried so hard to try and prevent that from happening."

Cape and Islands District Attorney Rob Galibois said this victim is not alone.

"There's a void of justice there that is very frustrating," he said in an interview. "You have a situation where you have a victim that trusts, for lack of a better word, our prosecutors and now our prosecutors are coming to them saying, 'We can't go forward anymore."

Cape & Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois has written to the regional ICE office asking for a meeting to talk about ICE’s arrest of criminal defendants facing trial.Our investigation found cases from Barnstable to the Berkshires where prosecutions effectively end when federal immigration agents step in. In some cases, the suspects avoid years or even decades of prison time if convicted and instead live freely in their home country.

That is what happened with Warley Neto, who was charged last year with raping a 13-year-old girl on Martha's Vineyard. His prosecution stopped last August after ICE arrested him. Now, he is free in Brazil.

In Berkshire County, Billy Buitrago-Bustos was charged last year with rape of a child with force, but court records show he was deported to Colombia before his case was resolved.

Court records show that prosecutors and judges often try to keep the criminal cases going after ICE takes defendants into custody by issuing a document known as habeas corpus, a document that requires a jailer to bring the defendant to court. In these cases, the jailer is typically the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, which has a contract with ICE to hold immigrant detainees.

But Galibois said those requests have not been honored.

"We ask if they can be brought back to our jurisdiction so we can continue on with the prosecution. That hasn't been our experience to date," he said.

That includes the case with Sola. His criminal court records show the state court repeatedly issued requests to ICE to have the Plymouth County Correctional Facility transport him to court, but ICE denied the requests.

At the time of his arrest by ICE, Sola was out on $5,000 bail with conditions that included wearing a GPS device and staying away from the alleged victim and her family. He faced a minimum of 10 years in prison if convicted.

Elmer Sola, pictured in an ICE press release, was out on $5,000 bail and fitted with a GPS device when ICE arrested him last year, effectively ending his prosecution.In response to questions from 5 Investigates, an ICE spokesperson said, “In the case of Elmer Sola, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts saw fit to release this alleged predator back into the community to potentially reoffend, so ICE Boston arrested him and placed him into removal proceedings more than eight months ago. ICE took action where the Commonwealth did not. ICE will not stand idly by while criminal aliens are released by local jurisdictions back into the communities that they have already victimized.”

Galibois wrote a letter this week to the head of ICE New England asking for a meeting to explore a better way to work together to hold criminals accountable and obtain justice for victims.

Galibois is also concerned that people deported can still end up returning to the United States illegally, putting more potential victims in this country at risk.

That is something that weighs on the teen, who worries the man she says molested her is now free.

"You want to get rid of these illegal aliens and rid your country of this. But just because you're rid this country of a menace, you're giving it to another country to deal with. The problem doesn't just go away," she said.

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