An illegal immigrant serving a 139-year sentence for raping and impregnating his underage stepdaughter will get yet another chance to walk free in the coming months, thanks to a loophole in a California law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that has turned the state's parole system into a revolving door for convicted predators.
Israel Ceja, 63, saw his early release blocked Wednesday after an en banc parole board review convened at Newsom's request. But an official with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed to Fox News Digital that a new hearing has already been ordered. In the coming months, the man who destroyed his stepdaughter's childhood will sit before commissioners again and ask them to let him go.
That is the practical result of the Elderly Release Program as amended by Newsom in 2020: a convicted child rapist who has served roughly 20 percent of his sentence can keep coming back to the table, and the people he harmed have to relive it every time.
A Yolo County jury convicted Ceja in 2000 for years of sexual abuse against his stepdaughter, Roxanne Cruz. The abuse began in 1993, when Cruz was eleven years old. Ceja raped and impregnated her. The jury handed down a 139-year sentence, a term that, by any ordinary measure, meant he would die in prison.
Ceja illegally migrated from Mexico when he was fifteen. He has no legal right to be in the United States. During his parole hearing, he told commissioners he planned to return to Mexico if released.
What he also told them should have ended the conversation. Ceja admitted he still had active sexual fantasies about his victim while in prison. Asked when he last had one, he said he "couldn't remember." He said he would pray to find relief.
His stepdaughter heard that and understood it differently than the commissioners did. At a press conference, Cruz spoke directly about what Ceja meant by "pray."
"You don't understand what he meant when he said he would 'pray.' He told you guys right there what he was going to do. That he was going to go out and prey on little kids, not that he was going to be praying to God."
That is the voice of a woman forced to beg the state not to release the man who raped her as a child, a man who, by his own admission, still fantasizes about what he did.
California established the Elderly Release Program in 2014, setting eligibility at age 65 with at least 25 years served. In 2020, Newsom signed a law that lowered the threshold to 50 years old with 20 years served. The change was part of a package of criminal justice reforms intended to address prison overcrowding.
The program excludes three-strike offenders, those serving life without parole, and inmates facing the death penalty. It does not exclude convicted child rapists sentenced to determinate terms, no matter how long those terms are. That is the loophole Yolo County District Attorney Jeffrey Reisig has been pressing Newsom and California lawmakers to close.
Newsom's record on clemency and criminal justice has drawn repeated scrutiny. The governor has previously pardoned an illegal immigrant convicted of attempted murder, blocking the individual's removal from the country, a pattern that raises serious questions about whose safety Sacramento prioritizes.
In January, a two-commissioner parole board panel granted Ceja early release. The decision drew immediate backlash. Reisig said his office and the victim were not consulted or even notified before the grant was made.
One of the commissioners on the panel, Neil Schneider, defended the decision at the time. He said the commissioners were not "unleashing a dangerous man" and predicted Ceja would be an "excellent citizen" in Mexico.
An "excellent citizen." A man who admitted to ongoing sexual fantasies about the child he raped. A man who served a fifth of a 139-year sentence. The commissioner's words speak for themselves.
Reisig has not minced words. He called the situation "twisted" and urged Newsom to act unilaterally. As Reisig told the New York Post, "I don't believe that child rapists are ever, ever appropriate for releasing back into the community."
He pressed further, arguing that Newsom has the power to stop this right now, and has used similar authority before.
"He could issue a moratorium on any elderly parole releases of child rapists with the stroke of a pen. He doesn't want to admit that, but he did it for the death penalty. He could do it here."
That comparison is pointed. Newsom placed a moratorium on the death penalty, a sweeping executive action that overrode the expressed will of California voters. Reisig is asking why the governor can find the political will to spare condemned killers but not to keep convicted child rapists behind bars.
Reisig laid out the human cost plainly:
"The general public does not want this, and all they're doing is victimizing, re-victimizing the victims and the communities. Nobody wants these guys coming back to their community."
The broader pattern of California's governance failures extends well beyond parole policy. Critics have questioned whether Newsom is even paying attention, given that travel records show he spent 229 days outside California since 2023.
An official from Newsom's office told Fox News Digital that the governor only has the power to reverse a parole grant in murder cases. In all other cases, the governor can only refer a decision back to the Board of Parole Hearings for a full commissioner review, which is what happened here.
The official also described the parole process as "stringent," citing "numerous" safeguards and the "use of validated risk assessment tools" to ensure inmates "pose no unreasonable risk to public safety." The official said less than 12 percent of scheduled parole hearings result in grants.
Those numbers are cold comfort when the 12 percent includes a man like Ceja. The system's safeguards did not prevent two commissioners from voting to release a confessed child rapist who still fantasizes about his victim. The "stringent" process produced a result so indefensible that the governor himself had to intervene, and even then, all he could do was delay the next hearing.
California lawmakers introduced legislation in recent months to close the gap. The results illustrate exactly how Sacramento handles the issue when cameras aren't rolling.
State Sen. Roger Niello, a Republican, introduced a measure that would exclude criminals convicted of rape, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts, and other sex offenses from elderly parole eligibility. The Senate Public Safety Committee killed it earlier this week. Niello said he was "disheartened" by the outcome.
Democratic state Assembly member Stephanie Nguyen introduced Assembly Bill 2727, which takes a narrower approach. It would raise the age for convicted sex offenders to seek parole from 50 to 65 and require a psychological evaluation through the Department of State Hospitals. The bill passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee earlier this month.
But the final markup gutted the bill's strongest provision, a ban on violent sex offenders sentenced to life from ever seeking early release. What emerged from committee was a watered-down version that raises the age threshold but leaves the fundamental loophole intact.
So the legislature had two chances to fix this. One measure was killed outright. The other was stripped of its teeth. Meanwhile, California continues to use taxpayer resources in ways that prioritize the interests of people in the country illegally, a dynamic familiar to anyone who followed the recent push to fund legal defense for illegal immigrants with public dollars.
Ceja is not the only convicted predator to benefit from the expanded program. Fox News Digital reported in February that David Allen Funston, 64, was granted parole under the Elderly Release Program. Funston was convicted of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation after abducting and molesting at least eight children in the Sacramento area in the 1990s.
Two cases. Two men convicted of horrific crimes against children. Both eligible for early release under a law Newsom signed. The pattern is not an accident, it is the predictable consequence of a policy that treats prison overcrowding as a higher priority than the safety of children.
At a press conference last month, Newsom acknowledged concerns with the Elderly Release Program and said there needs to be "deeper scrutiny" regarding violent sexual predators. "Deeper scrutiny" is not a fix. It is a talking point designed to buy time while the same system keeps producing the same results.
The question of how states handle criminal illegal immigrants, whether through release, parole, or deportation protections, continues to divide lawmakers at every level. Even in Congress, the debate over shielding certain immigrants from removal reflects the same tension between enforcement and leniency.
Ceja remains in custody. For now. A new parole hearing will be scheduled in the coming months. When it arrives, the same process that produced a two-commissioner vote to free him will run again. The victim will have to fight again. The DA will have to mobilize again. And the governor will have to decide, again, whether to intervene, or whether to let the system he built do what it was designed to do.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment. The agency's response, if any, was not included in reporting.
Reisig's closing message to Newsom was simple:
"Step up, protect children. Stop allowing child rapists to get out early."
When a district attorney has to beg a governor to keep a child rapist in prison, the system isn't broken. It's working exactly the way Sacramento designed it, and that's the problem.
