When burglar Kesler Dufrene became a twice-convicted felon in 2006, a Bradenton judge shipped him to prison for five years. And because of his convictions, an immigration judge ordered Dufrene deported to his native Haiti.

That never happened.

Instead, when Dufrene’s state prison term was up, Miami immigration authorities in October 2010 released him from custody. Two months later, North Miami police say, he slaughtered three people, including a 15-year-old girl in a murder case that remains as baffling today as it did the afternoon the bodies were discovered.

DNA on a rifle found inside the house and cellphone tracking technology later linked Dufrene to the Jan. 2, 2011, slayings.

But North Miami detectives never got to interrogate him. Just 18 days after the murders, Dufrene shot and killed himself when he was cornered by Manatee County sheriff’s deputies in Bradenton after an unrelated break-in and shooting there.

The episode is a black eye for U.S. authorities, who by law could not detain Dufrene indefinitely after the Obama administration ordered a temporary halt of deportations to the island nation. The deportations were halted because of the carnage wrought by Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake.

“Because of the moratorium on removals to Haiti in effect when Dufrene came into ICE custody, his removal to Haiti was not likely in the reasonably foreseeable future,” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said in a statement Friday.

For North Miami detectives, the case remains an enigma. Dufrene, a drifter who lived in Manatee County, had no connection to the North Miami house, the family or the South Florida area other than his brief stay at the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade.

“Although a subject has been identified in this case, I believe someone else or several people could be involved with him in this homicide,” said North Miami police Detective Stacina Jones, the lead detective.

The failure to deport Dufrene infuriates the victims’ family members. “This guy shouldn’t have been in America,” said Audrey Hansack, 37, who moved back to her native Nicaragua after the murder of her daughter Ashley Chow. “I’m so upset with the whole situation. Because of immigration, my daughter is not alive.”

Ashley, a North Miami High School student who aspired to become a lawyer, lived in the house in the 400 block of Northwest 134th Street. Her mother owned the house, and rented an attached efficiency to a family friend, Harlen Peralta, 25, and her boyfriend, Israel Rincon, 35.

Peralta worked at a beauty salon. Rincon, who had recently separated from his wife of 10 years, coached youth baseball.

“His love was baseball. In his free time, he would train kids for no charge,” said Alicia Rincon, his former wife. “He was hoping that one day one of his kids would go to the major leagues.”

It was on Jan. 2, 2011, that worried relatives called police to check on the family. About 3:30 p.m., officers and paramedics entered the house to discover the gruesome scene — all three shot to death.

The murders baffled investigators. At first, they suspected the deaths might have been a murder-suicide, but the crime-scene evidence did not back up that theory.

Other clues were just as puzzling. Detectives suspected the killings took place between 3 and 6 a.m., but neighbors reported no sounds of gunfire. As the sun rose, a mysterious man knocked on a bleary-eyed neighbor’s door and asked for directions to a Metrorail station.