After it was discovered that they had supposedly harboured Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, a suspected part of the Cuban group, Tren de Aragua, in a attack by national agents at their Las Cruces home, past Dona Ana County sheriff Judge Joel Cano and his wife Nancy were detained on Thursday.
The state’s highest court likewise entirely prohibited Cano from holding any administrative office in New Mexico, which resigned in March.
According to court records, Ortega-Lopez was originally hired by Nancy Cano to carry out house repairs, and allegedly entered the country without authorization in December of that year. Eventually, he moved into the hotel run by the Cano family.
Authorities located gang-related clothes, tattoos, messages, and text emails that Ortega-Lopez and the Tren de Aragua group linked through a later investigation. Also, Ortega-Lopez allegedly posed with firearms in photoshopped images on social media, some of which he claimed were those of April Cano, the Cano mother’s child.
Ortega-Lopez is currently facing federal charges for possessing a firearm while an illegitimate alien, with a chance of receiving a 15-year prison sentence if found guilty.
Following the Trump administration’s title of the Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, Venezuelan refugees have attracted a lot of interest. Trump cited the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the leader to arrest or hold hostage members of a hostile country during a conflict.
Trump has sparked a constitutional conflict by sending two planeloads of suspected Tren de Aragua users to an El Salvador jail. On April 7, the US Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s deportation restrictions.
