Federal immigration enforcement agents arrested a Haitian national who is in the country illegally after he was charged with the rape and sexual battery of a “developmentally disabled person,” according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Pierre Lucard Emile, 31, was arrested by Boston Police in Dorchester last September on heinous sexual assault charges. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston field office states that it had lodged an immigration detainer against the Haitian citizen. However, the municipal court in Dorchester released him following his arraignment on the charges there.

“Disturbingly and despite our filing an immigration detainer, this individual was released back into the community by the criminal court,” said Todd Lyons, the field office director for the Boston ERO. “The men and women of ERO Boston continue to protect the community from those who pose a real public safety threat to our communities.”

According to an ERO statement, agents arrested him without incident in Dorchester on Jan. 9. He is in ICE custody as his local criminal case is prosecuted in the court, after which he is subject to a hearing before a federal immigration judge.

ERO was busy in the last fiscal year, as the office reports a nearly 20% increase in its arrests during fiscal year 2023, which saw a total of 170,590 arrests nationwide. Of those, the agency says 73,822 arrestees had a criminal history, averaging four charges and convictions per person.

An immigration detention database compiled and maintained by Syracuse University in New York reports that there were a total of 27,131 people in immigration detention on the final day of last year and that 66.8 of detainees have no criminal record, with more having only minor offenses on their criminal records.

The majority of ICE detention facilities are located in states on the U.S. southern border — Texas has the most detainees, with the database tracking a total of 14,070 in the current fiscal year — but every state has detention facilities that ICE contracts with to hold immigration detainees. The database shows a total of 127 facilities in Massachusetts, most of which are quite small.