Case Explained: Salvadoran man convicted in fatal DWI crash gets deported – Legal Perspective

A Salvadoran man facing up to 12 years behind bars after he fatally struck a 69-year-old Hicksville man on a bicycle could evade prison time after federal immigration officials deported him to his native country in December despite the Nassau district attorney’s attempt to see him face justice.

Wilfredo Blanco Molina, 41, was scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday after pleading guilty in September to aggravated vehicular homicide, second-degree manslaughter, driving while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident and other charges.

He admitted to being drunk and high on cocaine just before 4 a.m. on Oct. 27, 2024, when he swerved his 2006 Chrysler Sebring and struck Robert McCarthy, 69, who was biking east on Old Country Road near State Street, court records say.

Molina continued about a quarter mile down the road, where he stopped because of a flat tire, prosecutors said. Officers saw the disabled car and stopped to help out. That’s when they noticed the damage to the passenger side headlight, mirror and blood on the front bumper, authorities said.

Police found cocaine in his pocket and tests showed his blood alcohol level at 0.22, nearly three times the legal limit, two hours after the fatal crash, court records say.

Molina is a married father of two children who works in event design and set-up. He was released on $10,000 cash bail on March 17, 2025, according to the New York State courts website.

His lawyer, Christopher Graziano, said, and court records confirm, that his client returned for each scheduled court appearance until after his guilty plea on Sept. 30, when he was ordered to report to the Nassau County Department of Probation at 400 Old Country Rd. for his pre-sentence report.

A pre-sentence report allows probation officials to assess the severity of a defendant’s crime and weigh any aggravating or mitigating factors before making a recommendation for punishment to the judge.

Graziano said that as Molina left the probation office, agents with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested him and sent him to Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana on Dec. 10.

The Nassau County district attorney filed paperwork with immigration officials, asking that he be held in the country. But an immigration judge issued a removal order authorizing his deportation.

“In the meantime, even before the removal order was issued, I know the DA’s office was working to file the writ,” to hold him in the U.S., Graziano told Newsday. “We realistically expected that he was gonna be deported before Christmas. But the DA’s office was trying to get him back.”

Graziano said his client has temporary protected status to be the U.S. but when he went to renew it, it was canceled because of his conviction.

A person from El Salvador who arrived in the United States prior to 2001 is allowed to remain in the country under a temporary protective order as long as they renew it every 18 months.

Molina arrived in the U.S. in the 1990s. “He came to the United States as a young man, to flee from the devastation of the civil war in El Salvador combined with the crazy gang situation,” his immigration lawyer, Rosemarie Barnett, told Newsday.

She confirmed that Molina arrived in El Salvador on Dec. 19.

Nicole Turso, a spokeswoman for Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly, confirmed that Molina had been deported despite the office’s attempts to keep him in the country but did not immediately comment further.

Graziano, Molina’s defense attorney, faulted Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s policy promoting cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.

“I understand his desire to make sure that if someone is convicted of a violent felony offense that they wind up working with immigration to help the immigration law be enforced,” said Graziano, “but when you put in a policy that also says that probation should work with ICE and they’re working together before the defendant is even sentenced, that policy leads to victims and families being deprived of them getting justice.”

The county executive’s spokesman and ICE did not immediately return a request for comment.