Federal immigration officials failed to deport an illegal immigrant facing gang-related charges who is now charged with murdering a rival in a Springfield Mall parking lot.

Rafael “Cheve” Parada-Mendoza was supposed to be deported by the Department of Homeland Security in 2006. Instead, he stayed in the United States and, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Arlington last week, fatally shot and killed a rival gang member last December.

Federal authorities allege that Parada-Mendoza and another illegal immigrant gunned down Christian Argueta in a parking lot outside the Cerro Grande restaurant in the Springfield Mall a few weeks before Christmas.

The case has caught the attention of critics of federal immigration policy, and especially the Department of Homeland Security.

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“I just can’t understand what their priorities are,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chairwoman of an immigration subcommittee for the House Judiciary Committee. “I’m hearing from the states that they can’t get [immigration agents] to show up and take criminals away. Meanwhile, they’re taking nannies into custody.”

Some local governments, such as Prince William County, are taking matters into their own hands and arresting undocumented immigrants.

But that’s no guarantee federal authorities will deport them. Nearly 90,000 illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds are believed to have absconded from their deportation appointments, according to a 2004 report commissioned by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

“We put them back on the streets to settle their affairs and then, surprise, surprise, they skip their deportation appointment,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit group that lobbies to curtail immigration.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Ernestine Fobbs didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Immigration lawyer Frederic W. Schwartz Jr. said the staggering scale of America’s illegal immigrant population has created a sense of fatigue and hopelessness among federal authorities.

“The impossibility of their task washes away any sense of urgency,” he said. “They can’t be everywhere and they have no time to find out where they should be first.”

bmyers@dcexaminer.com