Apparently Trump doesn't want to deport all criminal illegal aliens

Star witness against Kilmar Abrego García was due to be deported. Now he’s being freed.

The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony.

Hernandez is among a handful of cooperating witnesses who could help the Trump administration achieve its goal of never letting Abrego walk free in the United States again. In exchange, he has already been released early from federal prison to a halfway house and has been given permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year.

Hernandez’s criminal record dates at least to 2015, when police in Chesterfield County, Virginia, arrested him for public drunkenness and he paid a small fine. He has been arrested or in prison every year since, according to federal, state and county records reviewed by The Post.

Houston police arrested him in 2016 for alleged cocaine possession, but court records show prosecutors dismissed the case because of an issue with the search. Police in College Station, Texas, arrested him in 2017 for allegedly driving while intoxicated with a handgun in the car. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drunken driving and was punished with 60 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. He also forfeited the gun to the state.
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So that they can convict Abrego Garcia and deport him again Trump's ICE and DOJ are willing to let Hernandez and probably other illegal aliens convicted of felonies remain in the US and they're doing so while detaining and deporting other undocumented immigrants whose only "crime" is illegal presence in the US including a number of whom have citizen spouses and children, are productive members of society and have been in the US sometimes for decades.

 

In this case the deal is giving at least one and probably multiple criminal illegal aliens a free pass in exchange for testimony against another high profile undocumented alien who may or may not be a criminal so that they can legally deport him after failing to do so illegally. Just a guess if the government is going to rely on the testimony of other undocumented aliens who have been convicted of real crimes in exchange for leniency including release from detention and waiver of deportation they may not have a very strong case.

 

Absolutely. If the government had a strong case against Abrego Garcia he would have been charged back in 2022 when he was originally pulled over with the other workers in the van he was driving. The only reason that he is being charged is to provide a pretext for another and presumably legal deportation. By the way there was a reason why a court issued an order prohibiting his deportation back to El Salvador. It's most likely based on the belief supported by evidence that he would be targeted by a gang not because he's a gang member.

 

And apparently the Trump Administration is so concerned with prosecuting Abrego Garcia that it's diverting resources from the prosecution of serious MS13 gang members.
Trump’s Task Force Seeks to Drop Some MS-13 Cases While Pursuing Abrego Garcia

For nearly six years, Task Force Vulcan, a federal law enforcement team set up by President Trump during his first term in the White House, was enormously successful in pursuing its central mission: taking down the leadership of the violent transnational street gang MS-13.

But by this spring, the group was redirected into carrying out what appeared to be contradictory goals.

The unit’s agents and prosecutors were asked to unwind some of the charges they had brought against MS-13’s highest-ranking leaders even as they diverted resources into prosecuting a defendant whose ties to the gang were far more tenuous but whose case had become a political liability for the Trump administration.​

 

Below are links to articles on the subject.
How El Salvador’s Government Impeded a U.S. Probe of MS-13 — ProPublica
Trump administration trying to dismiss MS-13 leader’s charges to deport him
Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favor for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.

According to justice department records, the MS-13 figure in question, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, has intimate knowledge of that secretive pact, which – before eventually falling apart – involved Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s government ceding money and territory to the gang, who in return promised to reduce violence from its side and provide Bukele’s party with electoral support.