The Daily Caller: Sanctuary County Home To High School Rape Incident Hired An Expensive Immigration Attorney

April 2, 2017

By Alex Pfeiffer

Montgomery County, where the alleged rape of a teenage girl by two illegal immigrants occurred, hired an immigration attorney for an exorbitant amount of money, The Daily Caller has learned.

Leon Rodriguez signed a retainer agreement on March 8 to provide legal services “in connection with immigration matters.” The agreement was for $575 an hour, the highest hourly rate Montgomery County spent for an attorney at the time. This came in the weeks before the alleged rape at Rockville High School that put Montgomery County in the national spotlight.

Rodriguez is the former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and after leaving his post he became a partner at Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm with a large immigration practice. Prior to joining USCIS, Rodriguez was county attorney for Montgomery County and served on the board of Casa de Maryland, which works to protect illegal immigrants from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

While Rodriguez served on the board of the organization they handed out pamphlets designed to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation. Marc Hansen, county attorney for Montgomery, emailed Rodriguez on Feb. 16 telling him a previous email from him was “timely,” and asked whether Rodriguez could provide “consulting services regarding immigration matters.”

The emails were obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute through an open records request and were subsequently provided to TheDC. Hansen asked for assistance in understanding a particular matter which was redacted from the email. …Read the full story by Alex Pfeiffer.