Biden-Appointed Judge Frees MS-13 Killer Known as “The Witch”; DHS Says It’s the Second California Release

A Biden-appointed federal judge in San Diego ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release an MS-13 gang member convicted in an execution-style murder in El Salvador, ruling that agents held him for five months without a bond hearing or an individualized finding that he was a danger or a flight risk.

U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta directed the immediate release of David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, known to Salvadoran prosecutors as “La Bruja” — “the witch.” ICE had arrested him in San Diego on March 26 on an international warrant and held him at the Otay Mesa Detention Center pending removal. Ohta’s order, issued Aug. 26, also barred ICE from detaining him again unless an immigration judge first holds a bond hearing and finds renewed detention warranted. A status report was filed the next day.

Salvadoran authorities convicted Aviles Perez in December 2025 and sentenced him to 20 years for aggravated murder in a 2014 gang killing. Prosecutors said he and another MS-13 member chased a victim, forced him to his knees, and shot him in the chest, back, and face. In 2023 he was arrested in Monterey, California, after allegedly swinging a machete at a homeless man. That case also produced charges of possession of a controlled substance and petty theft. California released him after the local case. ICE grabbed him again this year.

Ohta, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2021 after Gavin Newsom put her on the San Diego County Superior Court, found that immigration officials gave Aviles Perez “no process before or after his detention” and that a hearing would not place an undue burden on the government. She treated the five-month hold as a Fifth Amendment problem rather than a removal problem.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did not treat it as a paperwork dispute. “This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer,” Mullin said Saturday. “This is now the SECOND time this dangerous illegal has been released back onto the streets in California. Because sanctuary politicians want to play politics from the bench, innocent Americans are in danger. DHS and ICE will not be deterred by these partisan games. If California’s leaders won’t protect Americans, DHS will.”

A federal official told the California Post that criminal aliens are being cut loose by judges “on courts across the country” and that line prosecutors often lack the staff to appeal the most aggressive orders. DHS framed the Aviles Perez case as the predictable result of sanctuary rules plus a district bench willing to substitute a bond hearing for an international murder warrant.

ICE is coming off three straight monthly arrest records, including 50,925 in August. The Aviles Perez order is the other half of that story: the administration can pick a killer up. A single district judge can put him back out and tell the agency not to touch him until an immigration court convenes. His whereabouts after the Aug. 26 release were not disclosed in the DHS statement.