A MS-13 gang member wanted for an execution-style murder in El Salvador was released from immigration custody by a Biden-appointed judge in California, federal authorities said.
The detainee, 35-year-old David Antonio Aviles Perez, is out of federal custody and back on the streets in sanctuary California thanks to San Diego-based judge Jinsook Ohta.
Aviles Perez was convicted of the brutal gang murder in his home country and still has an active aggravated murder warrant in El Salvador. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him in March, and he was being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in southern California.
DHS says a Biden-appointed federal judge ordered the immediate release of an MS-13 gang member convicted in an execution-style murder in El Salvador — ruling that ICE held him for five months without a bond hearing or individualized assessment of whether he posed a danger to the… pic.twitter.com/84fsa2mQ9j
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) September 6, 2026
It’s the latest example of activist judges playing politics and putting the safety of Americans at risk, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.
“This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement.
Ohta, who serves the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, ordered his immediate release Aug. 26, federal court records show, after Aviles Perez filed a petition challenging his detention and seeking his immediate release.
“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 in her decision.
ICE officers captured Aviles Perez March 26 in San Diego and took him into custody for the international warrant in El Salvador, stemming from a decade-old murder.
This is the second time sanctuary California has released this “dangerous criminal illegal alien back into its neighborhoods,” DHS said.
Aviles Perez was arrested in 2023 in California for assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance and petty theft, DHS officials said.
Under California’s sanctuary laws, he was let out of jail and remained at large until he was arrested by ICE.
“Because sanctuary politicians want to play politics from the bench, innocent Americans are in danger,” Mullin said. “DHS and ICE will not be deterred by these partisan games. If California’s leaders won’t protect Americans, DHS will.”
Aviles Perez is known as “la bruja” or “the witch” per authorities in El Salvador, The New York Post reported.
Aviles Perez and an accomplice were convicted for the July 2014 homicide of an MS-13 adversary, according to an alert issued by the country’s attorney general on Dec. 16.
Fellow MS-13 members chased the victim down and held him until Aviles Perez and his accomplice arrived. They forced the man to his knees and shot him multiple times in the chest, back and face.
Authorities in El Salvador identified both men as “active members of MS-13.”
Both defendants were tried and convicted while outside the country, Fox News reported. Officials sentenced Aviles Perez to 20 years in prison for aggravated murder.
At some point, Aviles Perez fled El Salvador and illegally entered the United States at an unknown date and location, DHS officials said.
He had a run-in with California police in 2023, after he allegedly swung a machete at a man in Monterey, California, according to an incident report.
Aviles Perez “hid the machete which was later recovered in the Holiday Inn parking lot,” the report states. He was identified as a transient at the time of his arrest, the New York Post reported
He was charged and convicted for that attack, according to Monterey prosecutors, but later released back onto the streets.
Following his arrest earlier this year, Aviles Perez had been held in federal custody pending his removal from the U.S.
Judge Ohta ruled that immigration officials violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights by holding him, saying they did not follow the required process to justify keeping him detained.
Ohta also barred ICE from detaining him again unless an immigration judge first holds a bond hearing and federal authorities can prove that he poses a danger to the community or is a flight risk, Fox News reported.
A federal law enforcement official blasted the decision when contacted by The California Post.
“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 told The California Post. “We should all feel scandalized by that.”
Ohta served as an attorney before Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her to the San Diego County Superior Court in 2020. She was appointed to the federal bench in the Southern District of California by then-President Joe Biden in 2021.
In a separate case in California, another gang-affiliated Salvadoran, Luis Valle, was also ordered released from ICE custody while awaiting removal.
U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez, who serves on the same court as Ohta, ruled there is “good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Valle was convicted of first-degree murderer for a killing in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. He was released from state prison on parole just last year.
Like Ohta, Lopez is a former attorney who was nominated for her federal judgeship by Biden in 2021, The Post reported.
