CNN
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The Justice Department moved to drop charges Wednesday against a man they had alleged to be a “major leader” of the MS-13 gang – just weeks after publicly lauding his arrest – a move his lawyer says is the first step towards immediately deporting him to El Salvador.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a press conference last month, said the man, Henrry Villatoro Santos, was MS-13’s “leader for the East Coast,” and that he was among the “horrible, violent, worst of the worst criminals.”
Now, just two weeks later, Trump’s Justice Department, without explanation, moved to dismiss the single federal charge he faced for unlawfully possessing a firearm. In a court filing, prosecutors said only that “the government no longer wishes to pursue the instant prosecution at this time.”
The switch in tactic comes as the Trump administration works to rapidly deport alleged gang members. In March, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives a president broad power to target and remove undocumented immigrants in times of war or when an enemy attempts an “invasion or predatory incursion.”
Villatoro Santos’ lawyer quickly moved to temporarily keep the federal charges pending against his client, saying that if the case were dropped, Villatoro Santos would be “immediately transferred to ICE custody.”
“The danger of Mr. Villatoro Santos being unlawfully deported by ICE without due process and removed to El Salvador, where he would almost certainly be immediately detained at one of the worst prisons in the world without any right to contest his removal, is substantial, both in light of the Government’s recent actions and the very public pronouncements in this particular case,” defense attorney Muhammad Elsayed wrote to the court.
He cited the ongoing legal battle over Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador’s maximum-security mega prison. Elsayed said that “in its rush to prove to the American public that this administration is tough on crime and immigration enforcement,” the government has “wrongfully deported” people and maintains that it has “no obligation” to facilitate their returns.
“The undersigned is keenly aware of the unusual nature of this motion,” he wrote. “But these are unusual times.”
According to court documents unsealed last month in the Eastern District of Virginia, Villatoro Santos was taken into custody on an outstanding administrative immigration warrant. He was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Federal agents found several firearms in the residence.
The arrest was executed by a new interagency task force established by the Trump administration to target transnational organized crime and coordinate ongoing immigration enforcement efforts across Virginia. Its creation was part of a crackdown by the Trump administration on foreign gang members residing in the United States.
