In 2010, a West African drifter who spent 15 years in state prison for sexually battering a woman in East Point walked out of an Atlanta jail under orders to report regularly to federal immigration authorities seeking to deport him.
Instead, he disappeared.
Immigration officials say they lost touch with Pablo Kalusa in 2011 after his home nation refused to take him back. That news alarmed his victim, who only found out about his release when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contacted her this year, four years after he disappeared. Now 44, she said she is still guarded and jittery from her encounter with him two decades ago.
"It's important for the victim to know," said the woman, whose name is not being publicized because she was the victim of a sex crime. "Even today — every little thing I heard downstairs — I would get up and look out the window. After finding out that he is not in prison — or that he was not sent back to where he is from — it makes me a little more scared."
Kalusa's case is one of thousands that highlight the secrecy shrouding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's practices. Unlike other law enforcement agencies, ICE declines to identify the convicts it releases from custody, saying it is seeking to prevent an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." The AJC learned of Kalusa's identity only after The New York Times Co. and a reporter for The Boston Globe successfully sued the agency for the information on thousands of convicts released by ICE in recent years.
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