[FoxNews] DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin accuses judge of putting American lives at risk
An MS-13 gang member convicted in a savage execution-style murder is out of federal custody in California after a federal judge ordered his immediate release, igniting fury from the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ordered the release of David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, aka "the witch," after finding that immigration officials held him for five months without giving him a bond hearing or determining whether he posed a danger to the public or a flight risk. Biden appointee
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin accused the Biden-appointed judge of putting the public in danger by ordering Aviles Perez’s release.
"This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer," Mullin said in a statement Saturday.
"This is now the SECOND time this dangerous illegal has been released back onto the streets in California," he added. "Because sanctuary politicians want to play politics from the bench, innocent Americans are in danger."
The case centers on a brutal 2014 gang killing in El Salvador and a legal fight over the Trump administration’s authority to detain immigrants while removal proceedings unfold.
Alvise Perez, identified by Salvadoran prosecutors as an active MS-13 member also known as "La Bruja," or "The Witch," was convicted while outside El Salvador in December 2025 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for aggravated murder.
Prosecutors said Aviles Perez and another MS-13 member chased a man through a mountainous area in La Unión before fellow gang members forced the victim to stop and kneel.
The victim was held by the shoulders as Aviles Perez and his accomplice approached, prosecutors said.
The gang members then shot the man in the chest, back and face before fleeing. Both defendants were tried and convicted while outside the country.
Aviles Perez entered the U.S. at an unknown date and location, according to DHS.
He was arrested in Monterey, California, in 2023, after allegedly swinging a machete at a homeless man at Laguna Grande Park near Monterey State Beach. He allegedly hid the weapon before officers recovered it from a nearby Holiday Inn parking lot.
Aviles Perez was charged and convicted after the incident but later released from custody. DHS blamed California’s sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials.
ICE agents arrested him again in San Diego on March 26 and took him into custody pending his removal to El Salvador.
He was held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center pending removal to El Salvador until Ohta ordered his immediate release Aug. 26, federal court records show.
After nearly five months in immigration custody, Aviles Perez filed a petition challenging his detention and seeking his immediate release.
Ohta ruled that immigration officials violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights by holding him without an individualized assessment of whether he was dangerous or likely to flee.
"Although Petitioner appears to have previously been convicted following a fight with another individual in May 2023, the government has offered no evidence that it detained him after considering those facts and making an individualized determination of his danger to the public or flight risk," Ohta wrote.
The judge said federal officials gave Aviles Perez "no process before or after his detention" and had not shown that providing a hearing would place an undue burden on the government.
Ohta ordered his immediate release and barred ICE from detaining him again unless an immigration judge first holds a bond hearing and determines that renewed detention is warranted.
A status report was filed in the case Aug. 27, one day after the release order. DHS said Aviles Perez was subsequently released from federal custody.
The ruling did not clear Aviles Perez of wrongdoing or find that he posed no danger. It focused on whether immigration officials followed the required process to justify keeping him detained.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Ohta to the San Diego County Superior Court in December 2020, according to the governor’s office.
President Joe Biden nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in September 2021. The Senate confirmed her that December, and her judicial commission was issued later that month, according to the Federal Judicial Center.
More outing of judges who will somehow need to be cleared away for confusing personal preferences for the law — for that this is a very useful process, annoying though the delays are. To be followed by another quick US Supreme Court ruling.
[Reuters] A federal appeals court panel rejected the Trump administration’s bid to lift a ban on using a federal immigration database to check the accuracy of citizenship records on states' voter rolls.
In a 2-1 ruling on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
…them again…
declined to lift a lower court's ban on using the Homeland Security Department's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database. The earlier ruling determined that the government cannot use the system ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, in which Trump's Republicans will be defending narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, both appointed to the appeals court by President Barack Obama, upheld the lower court decision that the SAVE system violates the Social Security Act as it shares millions of Americans' private information. The appeals court judges also noted concerns around the potential for inaccurate citizen information that could lead to people having to prove citizenship to remain registered voters, and in some cases could even lead to voter registration being canceled.
U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, an appointee of President Donald Trump, dissented.
A federal judge in Florida in July ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to resume giving four Republican-led states access to the database after another judge blocked it from continuing to use the database nationwide.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
