A federal judge in San Diego ordered ICE to immediately release an MS-13 gang member who is wanted on an international warrant for aggravated murder in El Salvador, ruling that his five months in immigration detention violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights. David Antonio Aviles-Perez, known as “la bruja” or “the witch,” walked out of custody on August 26, marking the second time California authorities have released him onto the streets despite a violent criminal record on two continents.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta, appointed to the Southern District of California bench by President Joe Biden in 2021, issued the order instructing ICE to free Aviles-Perez unless federal authorities could prove he poses a danger to the community or is a flight risk. The Department of Homeland Security says Aviles-Perez is an illegal immigrant who entered the country at an unknown date and location, carries an active international warrant for aggravated murder, and was arrested in California for assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance, and petty theft.
The ruling drew immediate condemnation from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The trail of violence attributed to Aviles-Perez stretches back more than a decade. The New York Post reported that the 35-year-old MS-13 member was convicted of an execution-style murder committed in El Salvador in 2014. He and an accomplice shot and killed a rival during a dispute. Salvadoran authorities sentenced him in December to 20 years in prison, and an international warrant for aggravated murder remains active.
How Aviles-Perez ended up free in the United States rather than serving that sentence in El Salvador is not explained in available reporting. But his time in California produced its own record. A police report obtained by the Post states that law enforcement in Monterey, California, arrested Aviles-Perez in 2023 after he allegedly attacked a homeless man by swinging a machete at him.
That arrest should have been the end of his time on the streets. It wasn’t.
Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis pointed directly at California’s sanctuary framework. She said in a statement at the time of his March ICE arrest:
“ICE arrested this dangerous criminal illegal alien and MS-13 gang member wanted in El Salvador for murder. Gavin Newsom’s sanctuary policies allowed this gang member to be released from jail after his arrest for assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance, and petty theft. Releasing this gang member back into California neighborhoods put American lives at risk.”
After his release from local custody, enabled by California’s restrictions on cooperation between local jails and federal immigration authorities, ICE tracked Aviles-Perez down and arrested him in March. He was held in immigration detention pending removal and extradition to El Salvador. At the time of his California arrest, he was listed as “transient.”
That pattern, arrest, sanctuary-enabled release, re-arrest by ICE, is familiar to anyone following the growing friction between federal enforcement efforts and judges or jurisdictions that intervene to block them.
Judge Ohta ruled that holding Aviles-Perez for five months in immigration detention without an individualized bond hearing or danger assessment violated his Fifth Amendment rights, Fox News reported. She ordered his immediate release.
The specific legal mechanism, the case name, docket number, and statutory basis for the ruling, has not been disclosed in available reporting. Nor is it clear whether Aviles-Perez faces any conditions of release, such as an ankle monitor or check-in requirements. His current whereabouts are unknown.
What is clear is the practical result: a man convicted of murder in one country and accused of a machete attack in another is free again in California.
Judge Ohta, notably described as the first Asian Pacific American female judge on the Southern District bench, was confirmed during the Biden administration. Her ruling fits a broader pattern in which Biden-appointed federal judges have issued orders that directly undermine the current administration’s immigration enforcement priorities.
Secretary Mullin did not hold back. In a public statement, he framed the ruling as a direct threat to public safety:
“This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer. This is now the SECOND time this dangerous illegal has been released back onto the streets in California. Because sanctuary politicians want to play politics from the bench, innocent Americans are in danger. DHS and ICE will not be deterred by these partisan games. If California’s leaders won’t protect Americans, DHS will.”
Mullin’s reference to “the SECOND time” underscores the cycle. The first release came when California’s sanctuary policies prevented local authorities from honoring an ICE detainer after the machete attack arrest. The second came courtesy of a federal judge.
An anonymous federal law enforcement official told the New York Post that the problem extends well beyond one case. The official said criminal aliens “are being released from ICE custody by activist judges on courts across the country.” The same official added that “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.”
That claim, that the judiciary is outrunning the government’s capacity to fight back in court, raises uncomfortable questions about whether the executive branch has the resources to enforce its own immigration priorities against a hostile bench.
President Trump designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization in 2025. That designation was meant to bring the full weight of federal law enforcement and intelligence tools against a gang responsible for murders, extortion, and drug trafficking across the Western Hemisphere.
Aviles-Perez’s release tests that designation in the starkest possible terms. DHS identified him as an MS-13 member. He carries a murder conviction from El Salvador. He has an active international warrant. He was arrested in the United States for a violent crime. And a single federal judge decided that his due process rights outweighed all of that.
The tension between procedural rights and public safety is real. No serious legal observer denies that detained individuals have constitutional protections. But the question of whether a convicted murderer with a foreign terrorist organization affiliation and an active international warrant qualifies as a flight risk or danger to the community seems, to most Americans, self-answering.
The New York Post noted that a second, similar release occurred simultaneously in the same court, suggesting the problem may be systemic rather than isolated. Meanwhile, other judicial decisions on deportation orders continue to shape the landscape of who stays and who goes.
California’s sanctuary laws sit at the center of this case. Without them, local authorities in Monterey could have held Aviles-Perez for ICE after his 2023 machete arrest. Instead, he was released. ICE had to find him again. And when they did, a federal judge let him go a second time.
The result is a system that, at every step, prioritizes the procedural rights of a convicted murderer and alleged violent offender over the safety of the communities where he lives, communities that had no say in the matter.
This dynamic is not unique to one case or one courtroom. Federal judges across the country have increasingly intervened in immigration enforcement matters, issuing orders that tie the hands of ICE agents and DHS officials attempting to remove dangerous individuals.
The anonymous law enforcement official’s warning about staffing and resource constraints deserves attention. If the government lacks the prosecutors to appeal these rulings, the judiciary effectively sets immigration enforcement policy by default, not through legislation, not through executive action, but through individual judges issuing orders that the executive branch cannot contest fast enough.
Several critical questions remain. What conditions, if any, were imposed on Aviles-Perez’s release? Where is he now? Will the government appeal Judge Ohta’s ruling? What was the specific legal basis for the order? And how did a man sentenced to 20 years in an El Salvador prison for murder end up living as a transient in California in the first place?
The current status of the assault with a deadly weapon charge from the Monterey machete incident is also unclear. Whether California prosecutors intend to pursue that case, or whether it has quietly been dropped, matters for understanding the full scope of the system’s failure.
None of these questions have been answered in available reporting. Each one represents a gap in accountability that the public deserves to see closed.
When a man convicted of murder abroad, wanted on an international warrant, arrested for swinging a machete at someone in California, and identified as a member of a designated terrorist organization can walk free twice in the same state, the system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way its architects designed it, just not for the people who have to live with the consequences.
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