Dominican Man Sentenced To Prison For Trying To Bribe ICE Officer In New Hampshire

By Damien Fisher, NH Journal

The bad news for Dominican national Marlon Aramis Suazo-Santos is that he will be deported.

The good news is he gets to stay in the United States an extra 18 months thanks to his bribery conviction.

Suazo-Santos, 46, was sentenced Thursday in United States District Court in Concord to 18 months on a conviction for attempted bribery. According to court records, Suazo-Santos offered $100,000 to an ICE agent last year if the agent would let him go free.

“Suazo-Santos was convicted, served time for fraud, and was due to be deported. But instead of facing the consequences of his criminal actions, he attempted to bribe government officials to escape. Thanks to the integrity of the ICE officers involved, Suazo-Santos was caught once again and will now serve additional prison time and face inevitable deportation,” said Michael J. Krol, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New England.

Suazo-Santos was sentenced to a prison term in 2020 on a fraud conviction, which he finished in July. But part of the sentence meant that Suazo-Santos would be deported back to the Dominican Republic when his stretch in Berlin ended.

An ICE agent picked up Suazo-Santos in Berlin and drove him to the detention facility in Manchester at the Hillsborough County House of Corrections, where he would await his final deportation order. On the ride from Berlin, Suazo-Santos offered the agent $100,000 to let him go before they got to Manchester.

The agent didn’t accept and reported the attempted bribe to his supervisors. Later that same day, the agent was tasked with driving Suazo-Santos to a different detention facility, and the convicted fraudster made the offer again. But Suazo-Santos didn’t know that the ICE vehicle was outfitted with recording equipment, and his bribe talk was caught on digital audio.

“At a time when ICE officers are facing unprecedented attacks, threats, and vilification, the ICE officer displayed the highest standard of integrity in the discharge of his official duties. Mr. Suazo-Santos will now serve an extra 18 months in prison as a result,” Krol said.

Suazo-Santos was charged with attempted bribery in September and pleaded guilty in November. He will now go back to Berlin to serve his sentence, at the end of which he will start the deportation process again.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.