Two alleged drug smugglers were acquitted after Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a key witness in the case to Tijuana, Mexico.
Javier Hernandez, a recovering drug addict who was arrested in 2015 during a federal raid that recovered 22 pounds of meth, pled guilty to conspiracy to possess meth with intent to distribute and agreed to testify against his co-defendants, one of whom was accused of regularly receiving shipments of drugs smuggled from Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reported.
But during a routine immigration check-in last year, Hernandez was arrested and later deported as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
ICE did not consult federal prosecutors in Los Angeles before deporting Hernandez, and months later, his co-defendants were found not guilty.
Javier Hernandez isn’t the man’s real name; the Times allowed him to use a pseudonym because he and his family received death threats over his plans to testify.
A fellow meth user had approached Hernandez and asked him for help disassembling a car that was scheduled to arrive at a third man’s home in Fontana, California.
The car arrived loaded with drugs from Mexico hidden in secret compartments.
It turned out the man who had driven the car was a federal informant, and while all three men were at the Fontana home, agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration busted the operation.
But even with the drug seizure and federal informant, the case was difficult to prove because no one was in physical possession of the drugs when the agents arrived, the Times reported.
The homeowner claimed he had agreed to let a friend use his garage to work on the car and didn’t know anything about the drugs.
Hernandez’s testimony would have been crucial to establishing that the homeowner knew about the meth hidden in the car, his lawyer told the Times.
Under the terms of his witness agreement, Hernandez was warned he could still be deported, but past administrations coordinated to keep federal informants in the country so they could testify.
Sources told the paper the case was an example of the Trump administration prioritizing deportations over other law enforcement activities, including serious drug cases.
Last year, Trump administration officials were so desperate to prosecute Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, on suspicion of human trafficking that they agreed to release a convicted human smuggler from prison in exchange for the smuggler’s testimony against the father of three.
Abrego Garcia’s criminal case remains ongoing. Last month, the administration asked a judge to allow the Department of Homeland Security to deport him to Liberia.
In a statement to the Times, a DHS spokesperson called Hernandez a “clear and present threat to public safety,” and said DHS was “not going to release criminal illegal aliens, including drug traffickers, from our custody onto our streets.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out to DHS for comment.
