Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, appeared in court in Maryland on Thursday for a hearing related to the heinous murder of Carmen Lizet Puch. He is scheduled for another appearance on Sept. 18 ahead of his possible extradition to Virginia.
The victim, a 42-year-old mother, was stabbed to death in Great Falls this week. Her body was found doused with gasoline. She apparently worked with the suspect, and they may have been romantically involved.
“We have video footage of our suspect at the restaurant where he worked with our victim arming himself with a fixed blade knife, taking a pair of black latex gloves, taking a water bottle, and then off he goes with the intent to do harm and kill the victim,” Fairfax Police Chief Kevin Davis said during a news conference after Cedillos-Campos was arrested. “We are still uncovering the many layers of motive that exist when two people are involved in a relationship, and where another relationship may exist as well.”
The Department of Homeland Security noted that “Cedillos-Campos is a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador who was arrested by CBP in 2024, after illegally crossing the Biden administration’s open border near El Paso, Texas. After his arrest, he was RELEASED into the interior of our country.” ICE has lodged a detainer with the Fairfax County Detention Center asking it to hold Cedillos-Campos.
There have been nine homicides in Fairfax County so far this year. Half of the suspects charged in those cases were in the U.S. illegally, FOX 5 reported. Although it isn’t clear that Cedillos-Campos had ever been arrested in Virginia, Fairfax County has a history of leniency toward illegal immigrants.
In February, an illegal immigrant who had been in the U.S. illegally since 2012 allegedly stabbed and killed Stephanie Minter at a bus stop. Abdul Jalloh had been charged with crimes more than 30 times in Fairfax County, including previous stabbings, but was never taken into custody by federal authorities for potential deportation.
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“The man who took my daughter’s life should not have been free to walk the streets,” her mother, Cheryl Minter, told lawmakers during a congressional hearing in May. “When policies protect people who are a known threat, innocent lives are put at risk. When warnings are ignored, families like mine pay the price.”
In April, two illegal immigrants, Maldin Anibal Guzman and Wis Alonso Sorto-Portillo, received a generous plea deal from Fairfax prosecutors after they admitted to killing a man in 2024. They could have been sentenced to spend decades in prison but will be eligible for release after just five years, meaning they could be out by 2029.
Earlier this month, 33-year-old Denis Humberto Roman Navarette was convicted of a 2024 rape near the W&OD Trail. He is an illegal immigrant who had been jailed on charges including sex abuse, resisting arrest, assault and battery, and indecent exposure in the years before he committed the rape. However, he was not turned over to federal authorities and was instead released back into the community.
Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities, notes that “the vast majority of victims of criminal aliens are immigrants themselves. You are not defending immigrants, human dignity, or the Constitution when you support policies that shield dangerous offenders from prosecution and removal. You are defending heinous foreign criminals who prey on the innocent immigrants you claim to help,” he testified in May.
“Like many state and local prosecutors, my office has a policy of not assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with federal civil immigration enforcement,” Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano told federal lawmakers at the May hearing. “We do not have the budget or personnel to enforce federal civil immigration law, and it is simply not our job.”
Nearby Loudon County is the only locality in Northern Virginia that has an agreement to hold prisoners for ICE. The sheriff’s office said that last year it detained 1,238 illegal immigrants at some point. Of those, ICE issued detention orders for 419 inmates. ICE picked up 253 of them, WJLA reported this year. The rest would have been released after 48 hours, which is the maximum amount of time the jail may hold them without charges.
The Justice Department is trying to extend its agreement with Loudoun, which is scheduled to expire in September. It argued in a federal court this week that a Virginia policy that limits cooperation with ICE unless the federal agents meet specific criteria is unconstitutional.
When she took office this year, Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed an executive order that ended an agreement that compelled state police and corrections officers to cooperate with ICE, a policy that had started under former Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
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