Trump’s ICE is deporting crime victims, witnesses and defendants before trial, report finds

Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts have disrupted criminal prosecutions across the country with the removal of crime victims, witnesses and even defendants in the middle of their criminal trials, according to a sweeping new report from members of Congress.

Tuesday’s report alleges a campaign to swiftly arrest and remove thousands of people from the country has effectively handed out “get-out-of-jail-free” cards to boost the administration’s deportation numbers, preventing federal, state and local prosecutors from securing convictions, leaving cases unresolved and derailing justice for crime victims and their families.

“The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is not making America safer. It is actively sabotaging our justice system,” according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, which released the report.

The administration’s “reckless, quota-driven approach to immigration enforcement is undermining public safety, due process and the rule of law while robbing victims and their families of access to justice,” he said.

The findings follow a series of reports detailing how the Trump administration has shifted an enormous amount of federal firepower into immigration enforcement while career prosecutors are leaving in droves, resulting in a dramatic decrease in federal prosecutions.

Deporting witnesses, victims and defendants “creates a culture of impunity, where criminals feel they can prey upon the immigrant community without consequence, because people who witness or become victims of crimes are too afraid to come forward,” according to the report.

Carmelo Gonzalez was likely a key witness in the case against his 11-year-old daughter’s abuser and killer last February, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to deport him before he could testify.

Javier Hernandez was prepared to testify against two alleged drug smugglers in Los Angeles before ICE deported him to Mexico last March without alerting federal prosecutors. Without his testimony, the case against the alleged traffickers fell apart, and the defendants were acquitted.

In September, Manuel Chairez-Montes was deported from Texas after his alleged attacker was indicted for aggravated assault. With the case in limbo, Adan Yanez Porras has been released on bond.

“Many immigrants live in mixed status families — when calling the police means a loved one may be kidnapped and disappeared, it makes all of us — regardless of status — less safe,” according to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement.

“By forcing immigrants into the shadows and redirecting law enforcement to immigration enforcement, DHS is denying justice and restitution to survivors of violence while putting Americans in danger,” she said.

The report also outlines a “disturbing practice of detaining and deporting people who were accused of committing crimes without waiting for a criminal verdict to be rendered.”

With defendants removed from the country in the middle of their trials, courts are forced to drop the cases and leave victims without justice or restitution.

In January, Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores, who was accused of stealing $100 million in diamonds in one of the largest jewelry heists in U.S. history, was deported before his trial was complete.

Last year, ICE deported Juan Benitez-Ortega two weeks before his arraignment in Colorado on charges that he strangled his girlfriend. He was charged with second-degree assault, but the case has been abandoned.

The report also outlines several instances in which people who were extradited to the U.S. were deported before their cases or sentences were completed in what lawmakers called “a bizarre misuse of federal resources.”

Those cases include Ramon Santoyo-Cristobal, a convicted Sinaloa Cartel trafficker who was sentenced to eight years in prison after law enforcement extradited him to the U.S. in 2020.

But two years into his prison stint, ICE moved him into deportation proceedings.

The report follows the president’s drastic, government-wide focus on immigration enforcement that has pulled agents from across federal law enforcement into immigration cases.

U.S. attorneys’ offices are also scrambling after a mass exodus of career prosecutors at the Department of Justice, which has quietly abandoned thousands of criminal cases since Trump took office.

More than 28,000 employees from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration, among others, have been shifted from their regular duties to civil immigration enforcement, according to a September report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

In the first four months of the year, federal prosecutors filed only eight gun or drug cases, compared to 77 cases in the same period last year, according to a recent analysis by Reuters. Within the last fiscal year, narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11 percent and federal agents seized 73 percent fewer weapons compared to one year earlier, The New York Times found.

The Independent has requested comment from Homeland Security.