Henry Josue Villatoro Santos, 24, was arrested last month by FBI agents at his family home in Virginia.
Federal prosecutors are seeking to drop a criminal case against an illegal immigrant whom the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused of being a leader of the MS-13 gang following his arrest last month.
In a brief filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on April 9, prosecutors did not explain why they were seeking to dismiss the case against Henry Josue Villatoro Santos, stating only that they were doing so for “good cause shown.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that the 24-year-old, a citizen of El Salvador who is living in the United States without legal status, “will now face the removal process.”
On the same day that the government announced its intention to dismiss the case, Muhammad Elsayed, a lawyer for Villatoro Santos, asked a judge to delay ruling on the motion for two weeks.
In a filing with the court, the attorney argued there is a danger, if the criminal case were to be dropped, that Villatoro Santos would be deported and jailed in El Salvador without due process.
“The Government now intends to pursue removal proceedings against Mr. Villatoro Santos pursuant to an ICE detainer,” Elsayed wrote.
“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.”
According to Elsayed’s filing, Villatoro Santos was arrested on March 27 after members of the FBI’s Special Weapons and Tactics Team executed a federal search warrant at his family home in Virginia.
He was charged with a single federal charge of possession of a firearm by an illegal immigrant.
An affidavit related to Villatoro Santos’s arrest states that, along with firearms, “FBI agents and [task force officers] also observed indicia of MS-13 association in the garage bedroom” while searching his home.
