A federal judge in San Diego told ICE to let a man go last month. She said ICE skipped a step. It held him five months and never gave him a hearing.
The man is David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35. He is from El Salvador. DHS and news reports say he goes by "La Bruja." That means "the witch."
ICE arrested him on March 26 of this year. It took him to the Otay Mesa detention center near the border. He sat there for five months. He never got a bond hearing.
His side filed court papers on August 17. They asked a judge to check if the jail time was legal. Judge Jinsook Ohta ruled nine days later. She said ICE had to let him out.
News reports quote her order this way. The government, she wrote, "has offered no evidence that it detain[ed] him after considering those facts and making an individualized determination." In plain words: no one at ICE sat down and asked if this one man was a danger or a flight risk.
So what is a bond hearing? It is short. A judge looks at one person. The judge asks two things. Is this person a danger? Will this person run? Then the judge picks. Stay locked up, or go free while the case moves.
Why does that rule exist? Immigration jail is not a punishment. It is a hold. The Fifth Amendment says the government owes you some process before it takes your freedom. That is what the judge ruled on. She did not rule on whether he is guilty.
Her order also blocks ICE from grabbing him again on the same facts. First an immigration judge has to give him that bond hearing.
The Department of Homeland Security is not happy. It put out a press release. The title called Ohta an "activist judge."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this: "This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer." Mullin said it was the second time this man walked free in California.
Here is Ohta's record. President Biden named her to the court in 2021. The Senate said yes that December. Before that she was a state judge in San Diego County. She also worked as a lawyer for the state of California.
Now the El Salvador case. A court there found him guilty in December 2025. The charge was aggravated murder. He got 20 years. Reports say the killing was in July 2014 in La Union.
But he was not in the room. Lawyers call that a conviction "in absentia." The trial went on without him.
American courts do not treat that the same. Our Constitution gives a person the right to be there. It gives him the right to face the people who accuse him. A guilty finding made while he was gone does not carry that weight here. Nothing in the reports says he has ever faced that murder charge in a U.S. court.
News stories also say police in Monterey, California arrested him in 2023. They said he swung a machete at a homeless man at a park. An officer found the machete in a hotel parking lot. That account comes from DHS and from news reports. El Tejano has not seen a court file on it.
Some things are still open. El Tejano has not read the judge's order. We are telling you what each side says it says. No lawyer for Aviles Perez is quoted in any story we found. None of the reports say if El Salvador has asked the United States to send him back. None say where he is living now. None say what stage his deportation case is in.
This fight is bigger than one man. In July 2025 ICE's acting director put out a memo. It changed how the agency reads the law. Under that memo, most people who crossed without papers get no bond at all. Lawyers sued. In San Diego federal court, these cases went from zero in January 2025 to more than 70 by October. Judges there granted 26 of them in full or in part. They turned down four outright. So the government does not lose every one.
Texas readers should watch this one too. On July 2 the Fifth Circuit ruled on the same question. That court covers Texas. It said the government cannot hold a person more than 90 days with no bond hearing. It said the government has to give a reason for that one person. The vote was 2 to 1.
A charge is not proof. Everyone is innocent until a court says otherwise.
