Illegal immigrant repeat offender arrested for rape — just days after his early release from jail for indecent exposure

An illegal immigrant repeat offender was arrested for rape last week in northern Virginia — just days after his early release from jail for indecent exposure, WTTG-TV reported.

Herndon Police said they arrested Denis Humberto Navarette Romero, 31 — who has no fixed address — for abduction with intent to defile and rape in connection with an incident that occurred on the night of Nov. 18 on the W&OD Trail between Ferndale Avenue and Grace Street.

‘It’s frustrating because I tell the community you should feel safe here …’

Police believe Romero had other victims, WTTG reported, adding the he’s been described as a repeat offender with a “troubling history.”

A Honduran national in the United States illegally, Romero has a documented history of sexual assaults and indecent exposures in the region dating back to 2022, the station said, citing Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard.

Romero has been arrested and released multiple times, WTTG said, adding that he choked a Herndon police officer in June 2022 amid a response to a groping incident.

DeBoard said Romero was charged with felony assault on a law enforcement officer in connection with the incident, but the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney downgraded the charge to simple assault — a misdemeanor, the station reported.

“I mean he literally tried to get his hands around our officer’s neck trying to choke him, so we don’t understand that one,” DeBoard noted, WTTG said.

The commonwealth’s attorney did not explain the decision to downgrade the charges but told WTTG that Romero was prosecuted for the incident and served jail time as a result.

Romero was taken into custody Oct. 19 for indecent exposure and sentenced to 50 days behind bars, but the station said he was released 25 days early — on Nov. 14 — because of Virginia’s “good behavior law.”

Four days later, Romero was arrested for raping a woman on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail in Herndon, WTTG said.

The woman who filed the October indecent exposure report — Jennifer Pugh — spoke to the station about what she witnessed.

“He kept coming trying to grab my dog. Then he was trying to come after me; he was saying stuff. He didn’t speak English, and then all of a sudden he started pulling his stuff out,” Pugh recounted to WTTG. “I said, ‘There’s Ring cameras all around, you know,’ and he didn’t care.”

The station said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not yet confirmed whether it was notified of Romero’s illegal presence in the U.S. following these incidents.

WTTG said the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office took him into custody after both incidents. The sheriff’s office website says its policy is that “ICE is notified every time an undocumented immigrant is taken into our custody.”

DeBoard told the station, “It’s frustrating because I tell the community you should feel safe here, and I do believe they are safe here, I truly do, but when you have cases like this, I look at this and see if some part of the system … if it was all working together, if there was a way to make it work, this would never have happened. I don’t think you can point the finger at any one place to blame because it’s a conglomerate of problems.”

The sheriff said Fairfax County Adult Detention Center inmates are fingerprinted, and those prints are transferred to the commonwealth, which then submits them to federal law enforcement agencies, WTTG noted.

“This is the only stranger rape that we have had in the town in my more than 12 years as chief of police,” DeBoard in a press conference Tuesday about Romero, according to the New York Post.

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin blasted local officials for allowing Romero’s release instead of turning him over to ICE and deporting him, the paper noted.

Police told WTTG that Romero is being held at the adult detention center without bond.

You can view a video report here about the situation.

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