A federal judge in San Diego has ordered the release of an MS-13 member wanted for aggravated murder in El Salvador.
David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, was freed from ICE custody last Thursday after federal Judge Jinsook Ohta ruled that authorities must either hold a bail hearing proving he is dangerous or a flight risk, or let him go. He had been arrested by ICE agents in April at a southern California detention facility where he was awaiting removal to serve a 20-year sentence for a 2014 gang execution.
The Salvadoran government says Aviles Perez, nicknamed “la bruja” or “the witch,” murdered a rival gang member in July 2014 in the eastern town of YucuaiquÃn. He and accomplice Ismael Enrique Mendoza Flores tracked the victim, shot at him during a dispute, then forced him to kneel while they “shot the victim in the chest, back, and face,” according to El Salvador’s attorney general. The country’s attorney general identified both men as active MS-13 members in a December alert.
A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the case ripped Ohta’s decision in an anonymous statement.
“Criminal aliens are being released from ICE custody by activist judges on courts across the country,” the official said.
“These judges are becoming emboldened by the failure of lower-level federal prosecutors to appeal their increasingly extreme decisions due to staffing and resource constraints,” the official continued. “We should all feel scandalized by that.”
Aviles Perez’s violent record extends to the United States. On August 2, 2023, Monterey police arrested him after he allegedly swung a machete at a homeless man during an argument at Laguna Grande Park near Monterey State Beach, according to an incident report. After the attack, he “hid the machete which was later recovered in the Holiday Inn parking lot,” the report states. Police identified him as a transient.
He was charged and convicted, according to Monterey prosecutors, but California’s sanctuary laws allowed his release back onto the streets. DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis slammed that outcome.
His release “back into California neighborhoods put American lives at risk,” Bis said.
ICE agents finally caught him in April on the international warrant, but Ohta’s order cut him loose before extradition could be arranged. Ohta, previously a San Diego County Superior Court judge appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, joined the federal bench in the Southern District of California in 2021 after nomination by then-President Joe Biden.
The Aviles Perez case surfaced alongside another controversial release from the same court. Last Wednesday, Judge Linda Lopez — also a Biden 2021 nominee to the Southern District of California — ordered gang-affiliated Salvadoran Luis Valle freed from ICE detention while he awaits removal. Valle, a convicted first-degree murderer sentenced to life with possibility of parole for a 1990s Los Angeles killing, had been paroled from state prison just last year. Lopez ruled there is “good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Ohta and Lopez did not respond to requests for comment on their decisions.
The back-to-back releases have intensified scrutiny of judicial oversight in immigration detention cases, particularly involving violent offenders with foreign warrants. Federal authorities had been preparing to return Aviles Perez to El Salvador to begin serving his two-decade sentence for the 2014 aggravated homicide conviction handed down by Salvadoran officials in December.