Jail had to release alleged killer of baby Sofia’s mom, sheriff says

The Sedgwick County Jail had no choice but to release Yesenia Sesmas this summer, Sheriff Jeff Easter says.

At the time, the woman had been charged with attacking a pregnant Wichita mother and trying to abduct the woman’s young children.

Sesmas got out of jail on July 26 when she posted bond 22 hours after her arrest. Sesmas, who is said to be in the country illegally, never showed up for her Aug. 9 court appearance.

On Nov. 17, less than four months after she got out of jail, Sesmas – still a fugitive – killed a former co-worker, Laura Abarca-Nogueda, and abducted Abarca-Nogueda’s newborn daughter, Sofia, Wichita police said.

“My sister could have been alive if she (Sesmas) was still in jail,” Jose Abarca, the victim’s older brother, said Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the jail released Sesmas in July before it had a chance to ask that she be detained to determine her immigration status. The Associated Press has reported that Sesmas, 34, is a Mexican national and was in the United States illegally.

But Easter says because of court rulings, the jail must release someone when they post bond or it could be held liable for unjustly holding someone.

ICE needs to get a warrant from a federal judge for the jail to hold a person, Easter said.

That stance has been in place at the Sedgwick County Jail for more than two years.

Since that time, ICE has yet to get a warrant to hold a Sedgwick County inmate, Easter said.

For a year and a half, Easter said, his office has been talking with ICE officials to avoid the situation that led to Sesmas’ release.

Dallas-based ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok on Friday gave this account of her release: On July 26, ICE officers received a list of the July 25 arrests from the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office. The list included Sesmas. “However, Sesmas had already been released from local custody by the time ICE received and processed the Sheriff’s list,” Rusnok said.

Sesmas was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail at 11:50 p.m. Monday, July 25, and released at 9:58 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, after posting a $50,000 bond, Easter said.

Easter said ICE had up to 12 hours to check the list after it was provided by the jail.

Sheriff’s stance

Easter maintains that his jail and others can’t continue to hold someone who has posted bond unless ICE gets a warrant from a federal judge to hold the person.

In one court case that Easter has cited – Galarza v. Szalczyk – the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that officials in Lehigh County, Pa., unjustly held a man for three days after he was supposed to be released, on suspicion that he might be an illegal immigrant. Later, immigration officials determined that the man was a U.S. citizen.

Even if a warrant wasn’t required, Easter said this past week, ICE could have detained Sesmas at the jail for only 48 hours while it determined whether she was legally in the country.

Easter said his office has met with ICE officials to avoid the very situation that led to Sesmas’ release.

One way to avoid that is to establish the jail – the largest in Kansas – as an ICE holding facility. With that status, a warrant wouldn’t be required. “That’s the way ICE has explained it to me,” Easter said Thursday.

Under such an agreement, the Sheriff’s Office would be able to hold someone for ICE for up to 72 hours, he said.

Officials have been trying to accomplish that for a year and a half, Easter said. Part of that process involves an inspection of the jail. An inspection has been conducted, but the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t heard back from ICE, Easter said.

Dallas jail situation

For now, Sesmas awaits an extradition process that would bring her from the Dallas jail to the Wichita jail to face the charges in the Nov. 17 killing and abduction.

ICE placed a detainer on Sesmas with the Dallas County Jail, Rusnok said.

“A detainer requests that ICE is notified before local authorities release an alien who has been arrested on criminal charges,” Rusnok said in an e-mail.

The Dallas jail doesn’t require warrants for inmates who are under ICE detainer requests, said Melinda Urbina, spokeswoman for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.

Still, while that is the situation in Dallas, any jail not requiring a warrant is taking the risk of being sued, Easter said.

ICE has staff in the Dallas County Jail 24 hours a day and is “constantly reviewing the inmates booked into our jail,” Urbina said in an e-mail. “They provide us with a paper ICE detainer form that asks the Dallas County Sheriff to hold an individual for 48 hours after their Dallas County charges are completed or settled.”

Bond considerations

That bond amount and above would be typical for the charges Sesmas was facing, District Attorney Marc Bennett said. The bond amount is supposed to take into account the risk that a defendant poses to the public and the risk that he or she will flee. The fact that someone might be in the country illegally doesn’t necessarily mean a judge will view them as susceptible to fleeing, Bennett said.

Part of the so-called flight risk is based on whether someone has ties to the community. Sesmas had lived in and worked in Wichita for years. She had family in Wichita, according to court records. She had no significant criminal record before she was charged this summer.

In the July case, an eight-months-pregnant woman alleged that Sesmas invited her to her Wichita rental home, brought out a knife and duct tape and tried to abduct her two young daughters for a ransom. The pregnant woman said she had to fight off Sesmas and was trying escape with her daughters when Wichita police arrived and arrested Sesmas.

After her arrest last month in the shooting of Abarca-Nogueda and the kidnapping of Abarca-Nogeuda’s baby, Sesmas said in a Dallas jailhouse interview that she didn’t mean to kill the new mother. Sesmas said she and Abarca-Nogueda had an agreement that Sesmas would take the baby. But Abarca-Nogueda’s family says that is a ridiculous claim, that Abarca-Nogueda was ecstatic about being a new mom.

After an intensive investigation, a SWAT team found baby Sofia at a Dallas home and arrested Sesmas. Sofia, six days old when she was stolen from her mother’s west Wichita apartment, has been returned to her family.

ICE staffing

At the Sedgwick County Jail, ICE staff doesn’t work nights or weekends but gets booking sheets every morning on who has been arrested, Easter said. ICE would have been able to see – starting more than 12 hours before Sesmas bonded out – that she was being held in the jail, Easter said.

The sheriff’s staff doesn’t have access to federal databases that show whether someone is in the country legally, he said. ICE personnel check their databases. But if someone bonds out quickly, ICE might not be able to intervene in time, Easter said.

The sheriff said he has been told by an ICE supervisor that the federal agency doesn’t have enough personnel in Kansas.

Rusnok, the ICE spokesman, said he can’t discuss staffing for security reasons.

Easter said: “I’m not blaming ICE for this, but it’s the system that is broke, and it’s got to be fixed.”

The sheriff said he believes that anyone illegally in the country who commits a crime should be deported after they have been held accountable.

But holding them for ICE – without a warrant – is out of his control “because of these court rulings,” Easter said.

He said he understands what the family of the slain young mother is going through.

In 1996, his brother, sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Easter, was shot and killed in the line of duty – by a fugitive.

This story was originally published December 2, 2016 at 6:38 PM with the headline "Jail had to release alleged killer of baby Sofia’s mom, sheriff says."