Overview
- Suffolk County police say on March 28 a man led a 4-year-old girl out a Patchogue laundromat’s back door, and the child was later found safe at the nearby public library.
- Officers arrested the suspect near the laundromat and charged him with second-degree kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
- A Suffolk judge released him the next day on supervised release with a GPS monitor, a decision the county district attorney publicly criticized.
- ICE detained Carlos Corte-Corte on March 31 and placed him in removal proceedings, citing prior removals in 2020 and an alleged illegal reentry.
- DHS condemned New York release policies in sharp terms, while the public defender said the incident was a misunderstanding tied to a language barrier and a mistaken belief about the child’s situation.