Illegal Immigrant Charged with Attempting to Burn Off Her Son’s Lips with Hot Spoon

An illegal immigrant remains behind bars in an Alabama jail after a local FOX affiliate station inquired about her near release on bond. The woman is accused of heating up a spoon on her stove and burning her son’s lips for a disciplinary matter.

Fox 10 News in Foley, Alabama, contacted the Baldwin County District Attorney’s Office when reporters learned a court was about to release Maria Cortes, 26, on bond despite her status as an illegal alien from Mexico. The DA’s office confirmed the immigration hold placed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and asked the court to raise Cortes’ bond to $100,000, Fox 10 reported.

Investigators with the Foley Police Department told Fox 10 reporters that Cortes used a stove to heat up a spoon that she then used to burn her six-year-old son’s lips. His offense appears to be that he lied about disciplinary problems at his school. The School notified police after the boy did not return.

“When we got over there and started looking into the incident, we realized that the child did, in fact, have some burn marks on his lips…third degree burns so quite severe in nature,” Foley Assistant Police Chief Thurston Bullock told the local reporter.  “That alone was enough to get us to thinking that something criminal had happened.”

The court initially set the Mexican woman’s bond at $10,000 and released her son to the custody of the boy’s father. When the local Fox affiliate learned she was about to make her bond and be released, they contacted the DA’s office about her immigration status and officials quickly stopped the bonding process.

Assistant District Attorney Matt Simpson told reporters his office will have the first crack at Cortes. Once the State is finished with her, the woman will be turned over to ICE officers for possible deportation proceedings.

“They’ll keep the hold on her to monitor the court system, to monitor what’s going on with these charges and see what the final resolution of the case would be, but we have her in jail at this point for our offenses,” Simpson explained.

The young boy received medical treatment for his burns before being turned over to his father by Alabama Department of Human Resources caseworkers.