Amos Yee is the only person from Singapore in the database as at Dec 10. - Photo: US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
SINGAPORE: Singaporean Amos Yee has been listed among the “worst of the worst criminal aliens arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)” on a new website by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Launched on Monday (Dec 8), the website “aggregates information on criminal illegal aliens arrested by DHS during enforcement operations since the start of the Trump administration”, the federal agency said in a statement on the same day.
The website is a database of “some of the hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens who have been arrested across all 50 states”, the DHS said, adding that those listed have criminal histories that include homicide, assault, rape, drug trafficking, child molestation, cruelty towards a child, battery and armed robbery, among other crimes. Yee, whose full name is Amos Yee Pang Sang, is the only person from Singapore in the database as at Dec 10.
Others featured on the website include Egyptian Yehia Elham Badawi, whom the DHS described as having an “extensive rap sheet”, including robbery, aggravated assault and multiple violent felonies stemming from a 1994 shoot-out that left a Philadelphia police officer seriously wounded.
Another featured convict is Colombian Nicol Alexandra Contreras-Suarez, described as “a transgender criminal illegal alien... who is charged with the rape of a minor and stalking in New York”.
The webpage states that Yee was convicted of enticement of a minor for indecent purposes, and sexual exploitation of a minor via photograph and telecommunications. It added that he was arrested in Chicago, Illinois.
The 27-year-old child sex offender is in the custody of ICE after he was released on parole on Nov 20. He is last known to have been detained at the Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin, a four-hour drive from Illinois, where he was serving a six-year jail term for child pornography and sexual grooming.
Yee entered the US in December 2016 to seek asylum after repeated run-ins with the law in Singapore over controversial comments that were derogatory to Christians and Muslims. He was granted asylum in March 2017, despite opposition from the DHS, and was released from detention in September that year.
In 2020, Yee was indicted by a grand jury in an Illinois court for solicitation and possession of child pornography. He had exchanged nude photos and messages with a 14-year-old girl from Texas while he was in Chicago, and was sentenced on Dec 2, 2021.
Barely halfway into his six-year jail term, he was released on parole on Oct 7, 2023, but was re-arrested the following month. - The Straits Times/ANN
