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Tracking Trump: Senate prepares budget bill vote; a vulnerable GOP senator skips reelection; Trump goes after Fed chair; and more
Tracking Trump: Senate prepares budget bill vote; a vulnerable GOP senator skips reelection; Trump goes after Fed chair; and more

Washington Post

time30-06-2025

  • Politics
  • Washington Post

Tracking Trump: Senate prepares budget bill vote; a vulnerable GOP senator skips reelection; Trump goes after Fed chair; and more

The GOP tax bill's passage remains uncertain as deadline approaches. A GOP senator announced his retirement after Trump attacks. The Trump administration notified Harvard of civil rights violations. A key witness against Kilmar Abrego García was released from prison. Trump escalated attacks on the Federal Reserve chair. The Supreme Court took up a case on political party spending limits.

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

Washington Post

time28-06-2025

  • Politics
  • Washington Post

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 into 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. Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to 'deadly conduct' in the Texas shooting, and is now the government's star witness in its case against Abrego. The government illegally deported Abrego to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador in March, and stonewalled for weeks after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States. Officials flew the Maryland resident back into the country this month, but only after a grand jury had indicted him for migrant smuggling, in part because of Hernandez's testimony. In court, prosecutors have identified their main witness as the 'first cooperator.' But a federal agent also testified this month that the main cooperator owned the vehicle that Abrego was allegedly using to smuggle migrants when the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped him in 2022. The Department of Homeland Security has identified Hernandez as the registered owner of the SUV Abrego was driving in that incident. That traffic stop is the centerpiece of the criminal investigation. 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. 'Otherwise he would be deported,' Peter Joseph, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, testified at Abrego's criminal hearing June 13. The government is also likely to give him a work permit, the agent told the court. Abrego's mistaken deportation in March to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center with more than 200 other deportees revealed the risks associated with the Trump administration's efforts to quickly fulfill the president's campaign promise to carry out mass deportations. But the Justice Department's decision to spare Hernandez shows that officials are also willing to keep serious offenders in the United States to meet their particular goals. Abrego has no prior criminal arrests or convictions. Hernandez was going to be deported a sixth time in the coming months. Then federal agents showed up a few weeks ago, asking about Abrego. 'It's wild to me,' said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. 'It's just further evidence of how the government is using Kilmar's case to further their propaganda and prove their political point.' Hernandez's criminal history and recent transfer to a halfway house in return for his testimony match the agent's description of the main cooperating witness. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment about the agreement to release Hernandez or on his criminal record. Hernandez's court-appointed lawyer, Javier Martinez, did not respond to requests for comment. Hernandez testified during the grand jury proceedings that led to the recent indictment against Abrego, who has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege that Abrego, 29, was a driver for a business that transported thousands of undocumented immigrants from Texas to states such as Maryland for money. Joseph testified that Hernandez told investigators he met Abrego around 2016 when he was living in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland. He alleged that they'd both worked as drivers for undocumented immigrants. Federal records show that more than 60 percent of convicted smugglers are U.S. citizens with little to no criminal history, and drivers are often low-level operatives in need of quick cash. After Hernandez moved to the Houston area, the two kept in touch. Both are from El Salvador. Hernandez is nearly a decade older than Abrego. Abrego crossed the southern border illegally in 2011 as a teenager, court records show, after he said he'd received multiple death threats from a gang. Immigration officers detained him for several months in 2019 after a Maryland police detective alleged he was an MS-13 gang member. The detective, who made the claim after an encounter with Abrego at a Home Depot parking lot, was later fired and indicted over misconduct in an unrelated case. Abrego's lawyers have said he was never a member of any gang. Abrego was released after an immigration judge ruled he should not be deported to El Salvador because his life could be threatened by the gangs that had sparked his decision to flee to the United States in the first place. 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 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 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. An immigration judge in Texas ordered him deported in February 2018 and he was sent to El Salvador that month. Two months later, U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested Hernandez after he waded across the Rio Grande into Texas. He pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to 30 days in prison. Federal court records show he was deported in May 2018. But Hernandez always seemed to find a way to get back in. By December of the next year, he had surfaced again, this time, in Mississippi. An officer had pulled over the vehicle he was riding in, and suspected Hernandez was helping smuggle migrants. The van held more passengers than seat belts and a large piece of cardboard was blocking the back window. Seven passengers were undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, and some admitted they had paid hundreds of dollars for rides north. Federal investigators said Hernandez admitted that he was in the United States illegally. He said he was running a business called 'Transs Express' that offered rides from Texas to South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Atlanta for $350 per person. He said he had started out as a ride-app driver in Maryland but there was too much competition, so he moved to Texas and started his own company. Hernandez sat in the front passenger seat, while his partner's unlicensed 18-year-old brother drove. The man told investigators Hernandez paid him $400 to help transport the migrants. Hernandez later pleaded guilty to illegally transporting migrants and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in 2020. It is unclear what happened after Hernandez finished that sentence, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to questions about his immigration history. On a December afternoon in 2022, Hernandez was 'highly intoxicated' and had just argued with his wife, according to Montgomery County Sheriff's Office records released in response to a public records request from The Post. Hernandez was riding around a Texas community known as The Woodlands with a friend at the wheel of a pickup truck. The friend told authorities Hernandez pulled out a silver handgun and, from the passenger seat, began to shoot out the window. It was before 4 p.m. and with neighbors nearby. Then, he fell asleep. Sheriff's deputies pulled over the truck. One deputy wrote that Hernandez was 'too intoxicated to give his side of the story.' Authorities said they recovered 11 spent shells and several rounds of live ammunition. 'Jose kept on saying he did nothing wrong,' the report said. Authorities charged him with deadly conduct with a firearm, a third-degree felony, in part because he was shooting in a residential neighborhood with a person only 50 feet away, and he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in state prison. After his sentence was up, federal prosecutors charged Hernandez with reentering the United States illegally after having been convicted of a serious crime. That crime carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years and hefty fines. Hernandez asked the federal judge for leniency, noting he had already been in state prison for two years. 'All I want is to go back to my country and to go back to my family,' Hernandez said. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen asked why Hernandez had been in state prison. His lawyer recounted the shooting but noted that nobody had been injured. 'Oh,' the judge said. Hanen granted the prosecutor's request that Hernandez serve 30 months in federal prison. He was nearing the end of that sentence, and facing imminent deportation, when ICE officers wrongly deported Abrego in March. The Supreme Court ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego's return to the United States in April, around the same time that federal investigators heard about Hernandez and began interviewing him in prison. An indictment was filed under seal on May 21, and Abrego was brought back in early June. Abrego's defense lawyers have disparaged Hernandez as a 'snitch' and a 'two-time felon,' though records show he has been convicted of at least three felonies. Others caution that Hernandez may fear deportation to the same Salvadoran prison where Abrego ended up. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes ruled on June 22 that Abrego was eligible for release from criminal custody, saying the government had failed to prove that he posed a flight risk or a danger to the community. She wrote that she put 'little weight' on the claims of Hernandez and other cooperators based on their records and interest in avoiding deportation. But the government has given conflicting signals about what could happen to Abrego next. Federal officials have said Abrego will not be freed pending trial, and that he would be transferred into immigration custody. A government lawyer told the federal judge in Maryland, who first ordered Abrego's return, on Thursday that immigration authorities would initiate civil proceedings to remove him to a third country. Top Justice Department and White House officials, meanwhile, have insisted there is no chance they would remove him from the country before his criminal trial. Pointing out what they described as those 'directly contradictory statements,' Abrego's lawyers made an unusual request Friday: to keep him in criminal custody until July 16, when a judge has scheduled a hearing to more fully explore the issue. They noted that both departments had worked together to secure an indictment against Abrego. The departments had also worked together to free Hernandez. Steve Thompson and Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.

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