An 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador who enrolled as a junior at a Virginia high school has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery after allegedly groping 12 female classmates over a period of several months. Israel Flores Ortiz, who is almost 19, was accused of repeatedly creeping up behind students in crowded hallways and grabbing them between the legs at Fairfax High School, located 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released under a federal government policy during the Biden administration, according to local outlet 7News. He appeared in court on Friday following his arrest on March 7. A Fairfax County judge denied him bail this week after reviewing surveillance video and determining the proposed conditions did not adequately protect the public.
The prosecutors did not oppose his release. The judge overruled them anyway. That detail alone tells you everything about who was taking this seriously and who wasn't.
Parents say Ortiz's behavior had been going on for months before his arrest. The mother of one alleged victim described the pattern in plain terms:
"He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs."
She made clear this was not an ambiguous contact:
"It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab. It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months."
Police listed February 25 as the official offense date, but the mother indicated roughly 12 girls had reported the assaults. Principal Georgina Aye sent a letter to parents on March 12, days after Ortiz's arrest, describing the conduct as "inappropriately touching other students" and "touching students' buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways."
Notice the language. "Inappropriately touching." "Transitioning in the hallways." The principal's letter reads like it was drafted by a liability attorney, not an educator responsible for the safety of teenage girls. A grown man was grabbing children between the legs for months, and the official communication to parents couldn't even describe what happened honestly, as New York Post reports.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released into the interior under a Biden-era federal policy. He then enrolled as a high school junior despite being nearly 19 years old. Every layer of institutional screening that should have flagged an adult illegal immigrant sitting in classrooms with minors failed to do so, or never existed in the first place.
After his arrest, ICE lodged a detainer seeking custody of Ortiz for deportation. The agency said the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office failed to honor it.
An ICE spokesperson did not mince words:
"Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians like Gov. (Abigail) Spanberger are outlawing cooperation with ICE and choosing to RELEASE criminal illegal aliens from their jails back onto their communities to create more American victims."
"We are calling on Fairfax County to honor our detainer to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again."
Fairfax County's refusal to cooperate with ICE is not a passive bureaucratic oversight. It is an active policy choice. Local officials decided that shielding an illegal immigrant charged with serially groping teenage girls from federal immigration enforcement was the moral high ground. That is the logical terminus of sanctuary policy: the people it protects are not the people it claims to protect.
Ortiz faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges, not sexual assault. The maximum penalty is one year in jail. For nine counts. For months of alleged predatory behavior against at least 12 girls.
One parent called the county's response "abysmal" and said officials "attempted to diminish what happened to these girls." That is not an unreasonable reading. When you describe a grown man grabbing minors between the legs as "inappropriately touching" and charge it as simple battery, you are communicating a message to those girls about how seriously the system takes what happened to them.
Fairfax County Public Schools offered the predictable boilerplate in a statement to 7News:
"While Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is unable to comment on specifics due to federal and state privacy laws, we prioritize student and staff safety and we fully investigate any time someone shares that an incident has occurred at school, or that they do not feel safe at school."
They "prioritize student and staff safety." They "fully investigate." And yet an adult illegal immigrant allegedly groped a dozen girls for months inside their building before anyone was arrested.
Every institution in this story failed in a predictable direction. The Biden administration released Ortiz into the country. The school system enrolled him without catching that a near-19-year-old illegal immigrant had no business in an 11th-grade classroom. The school let the behavior continue for months. The prosecutors didn't oppose bail. The sheriff's office refused to honor the ICE detainer. The principal's letter sanitized what happened.
At no point did any institution prioritize the safety of those 12 girls over the procedural comfort of protecting an illegal immigrant from consequences. Not one flagged his enrollment. Not one acted swiftly on the reports. Not one cooperated with federal authorities after his arrest.
This is what sanctuary policy produces in practice. Not a principled stand for civil liberties, but a cascading series of institutional failures in which every actor defers to the next, and the only people left unprotected are the victims. Twelve teenage girls learned that lesson in the hallways of Fairfax High School.
