A search for a convicted murderer in a California town has put residents on edge, with schools closing and Christmas events being postponed.
Cesar Hernandez, who was sentenced in 2019 to 80 years to life with the possibility of parole for first-degree murder, escaped Monday morning shortly after arriving at the Kern County courthouse in Delano, a city of around 50,000 in central California. State prison officials said late Thursday that he had likely fled the area and no longer posed a security risk to the town.
He was being transported to appear in court after pleading no contest to manufacturing a weapon and possessing alcohol or drugs in prison when he evaded staff and jumped out of the van, officials said.
“Hernandez is considered dangerous,” Delano police said in a social media post. “If you see him, do not approach.”
Cesar Guzmán, 32, was only blocks away at his barber shop from the intersection where Hernandez escaped. It’s been the “number one topic at the shop” since.
“Everyday we talk about it,” Guzmán said. “The clients are, they’re scared because they haven’t found him. We’re really close to where it happened.”
Delano has been inundated with a heavy law enforcement presence since Hernandez’s escape, with police knocking on doors and helicopters whirring overhead. Guzmán said it’s the first time something like this has happened in the town, where he has lived his whole life.
Several local schools locked down Monday, and they remained closed through Thursday as the search continued, local school districts posted on Facebook.
The city postponed its tree-lighting ceremony originally scheduled for Wednesday, and the Delano Chamber of Commerce delayed its annual Christmas parade scheduled for Thursday night.
Hernandez remaining at large puts a damper on the festivities, which Guzmán and his family have attended every year.
“Honestly, now we’re kind of like, ‘How can he get away from them? What the heck happened?’" Guzmán said.
Hernandez, 34, was convicted of shooting a man after leaving a bar in south Los Angeles, according to appellate court filings. He had gotten into a “heated argument” with his girlfriend at the bar earlier that night and was looking for her after she left.
The victim was at the bar but did not have contact with either Hernandez or his girlfriend, the filings said. As the man drove away from the bar in his pickup truck, Hernandez was seen following him in his car before getting out to shoot him. It's unclear from the filings what motivated the shooting.
Hernandez was last seen wearing an orange top and pants. He is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, weighs about 160 pounds, and has brown eyes and black hair. He was transferred from Los Angeles County in June 2019.
Anyone who sees Hernandez or has knowledge of his location is asked to contact law enforcement or call 911.
On the other side of the country, another search was underway for the man who gunned down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York on Monday. Police were following tips related to his whereabouts, including searching two hostels where the man may have stayed.
This undated booking mug, provided by the California Department of Corrections, shows Cesar M. Hernandez, who escaped while in custody, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024 in Delano, Calif. (California Department of Corrections via AP)
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s inauguration-day executive orders and promises of mass deportations of “millions and millions” of people will hinge on securing money for detention centers.
The Trump administration has not publicly said how many immigration detention beds it needs to achieve its goals, or what the cost will be. However, an estimated 11.7 million people are living in the U.S. illegally, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently has the budget to detain only about 41,000 people.
The government would need additional space to hold people while they are processed and arrangements are made to remove them, sometimes by plane. The Department of Homeland Security estimates the daily cost for a bed for one adult is about $165.
Just one piece of Trump's plan, a bill known as the Laken Riley Act that Congress has passed, would require at least $26.9 billion to ramp up capacity at immigrant detention facilities to add 110,000 beds, according to a recent memo from DHS.
That bill — named after a Georgia nursing student whose murder by a Venezuelan man last year became a rallying cry for Trump’s White House campaign — expands requirements for immigration authorities to detain anyone in the country illegally who is accused of theft and violent crimes.
Trump also is deploying troops to try and stop all illegal entry at the southern U.S. border. He triggered the Alien Enemies Act to combat cartels. The rarely used 1798 law allows the president to deport anyone who is not a U.S. citizen and is from a country with which there is a “declared war” or a threatened or attempted “invasion or predatory incursion.”
Detention infrastructure also will be stretched by Trump's ban of a practice known as “catch and release” that allows some migrants to live in the U.S. while awaiting immigration court proceedings, in favor of detention and deportation.
ICE currently detains immigrants at its processing centers and at privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and jails under contracts that can involve state and city governments. It has zero facilities geared toward detention of immigrant families, who account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.
“There’s a limitation on the number of beds available to ICE,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama. “There are only so many local jails you contract with, private vendors who have available beds. And if the administration wants to make a major uptick in detention capacity, that’s going to require the construction of some new facilities.”
Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S. border with Mexico leverages the U.S. military to shore up mass deportations and provide “appropriate detention space.” The Pentagon also might provide air transportation support to DHS.
Private investors are betting on a building boom, driving up stock prices at the top two immigration detention providers — Florida-based GEO Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic.
A fast-track budgeting maneuver in Congress called “reconciliation” could provide more detention funding as soon as April. At the same time, the Texas state land commissioner has offered the federal government a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border for deportation facilities.
The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that ICE is considering an expansion of immigrant detention space across at least eight states, in locations ranging from Leavenworth, Kansas, to the outskirts of major immigrant populations in New York City and San Francisco, said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney for the group and its National Prison Project.
The ACLU sued for access to correspondence from private detention providers after ICE solicited feedback last year on a potential expansion. Related emails from detention providers suggest the possible redeployment of a tent facility at Carrizo Springs, Texas, previously used to detain immigrant children, and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas — one of two major immigrant family detention centers that the Biden administration phased out in 2021.
“Under the Trump administration, Homeland Security will be working to try to detain everyone that it possibly can and also expand its detention capacity footprint well beyond what is currently available in the United States at this point,” Cho said.
Cho added that Congress ultimately holds the purse strings for immigrant detention infrastructure — and that the Pentagon's involvement under Trump's emergency edict — warrants a debate.
“How does this detract from our own military's readiness?" she said. "Does the military actually have the capacity to provide appropriate facilities for detention of immigrants?”
Advocates for immigrant rights are warning against a hyper-militarized police state that could vastly expand the world's largest detention system for migrants. Immigrant detention facilities overseen by ICE have struggled broadly to comply with some federal standards for care, hindering safety for staff and detainees, a Homeland Security Department inspector general found during 17 unannounced inspections from 2020-2023.
During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children -- including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base. In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families caught crossing the border illegally.
U.S. military bases have been used repeatedly since the 1970s to accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Groves reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.
A child of a migrant family from the Mexican state of Guerrero looks at a piñata of President Donald Trump at a shelter for migrants Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Migrants who were deported from the U.S. to Mexico are transported to a shelter, as they cross the El Chaparral bridge in Tijuana, Mexico, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
Concertina wire tops a section of a border wall separating Mexico from the United States Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
FILE - A deportation officer changes the handcuffs of Wilmer Patricio Medina-Medina from back to front after arresting him during an early morning operation, Dec. 17, 2024, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
Migrants who were deported from the U.S. stand on El Chaparral pedestrian border bridge in Tijuana, Mexico, late Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
President Donald Trump signs an executive order regarding the southern border in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
