A Salvadoran man alleged by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to be a top leader of the MS-13 gang is asking a judge not to dismiss a criminal case against him, despite the Justice Department earlier Wednesday seeking to end the case in favor of deporting him out of the U.S.
Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, who is alleged to be in the U.S. illegally, is asking a magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to delay the dismissal because he fears the U.S. government would immediately move to deport him to El Salvador’s CECOT prison without an opportunity for due process.
Villatoro Santos was arrested at a residence in Virginia on March 27 in a highly-publicized early-morning operation. After he was taken into custody on an outstanding immigration administrative warrant, a search of his room turned up weapons and “indicia of MS-13 association,” according to an affidavit from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were in attendance during the early morning raid. At a press conference later that day Bondi said the man arrested in the operation was “one of the top leaders of MS-13” and the “leader of the East Coast” for the gang. “He will not be living in our country much longer,” she added.
Villatoro Santos was charged in federal court with illegal firearm possession and was ordered detained pending trial.
On Wednesday morning, the government filed a terse motion seeking to dismiss the case. The explanation offered was simple, but lacked detail. “The government no longer wishes to pursue the instant prosecution at this time,” the motion said.
“As a terrorist, he will now face the removal process,” Bondi said in a statement on Wednesday.
That led to the peculiar circumstance of the defendant, Villatoro Santos, asking the court not to immediately end the case.
“The danger of Mr. Villatoro Santos being unlawfully deported by ICE without due process and removed to El Salvador, where he would almost certainly be immediately detained at one of the worst prisons in the world without any right to contest his removal, is substantial, both in light of the Government’s recent actions and the very public pronouncements in this particular case,” wrote his attorney, Muhammad Elsayed, in a motion to delay the dismissal for two weeks.
Elsayed noted that he was “keenly aware of the unusual nature” of the motion.
“But these are unusual times,” he wrote, asking the court to delay the entry of any dismissal order for two weeks to allow Villatoro Santos sufficient time to seek assistance from immigration counsel.
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