Framed immigrant gets bond in deportation case

The undocumented Mexican immigrant who was detained after being framed by a jailed inmate for threatening President Donald Trump can be released on a $7,500 bond, a Chicago Immigration Court judge ruled Tuesday morning.

Judge Carla Espinoza said at a hearing that she does not believe Milwaukee resident Ramon Morales-Reyes is a danger to the community pending removal proceedings.

The judge noted that although the 54-year-old Morales-Reyes has been arrested several times since 1996, he has only been convicted once, for disorderly conduct.

An attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security did not oppose a request by the immigrant’s lawyer, Cain Oulahan, requesting bond. Oulahan and Morales-Reyes appeared remotely, with the immigrant still detained in Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin.

Espinoza said that if Morales-Reyes is unable to post bond, the next hearing in the case will be on July 10, and that she would set another date if the married dad of three is released.

CNBC has requested comment from Oulahan.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement, said, “While this criminal illegal alien is no longer under investigation for threats against the President, he is in the country illegally with previous arrests for felony hit and run, criminal damage to property, and disorderly conduct with domestic abuse.”

“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and fulfilling the President’s mandate to deport illegal aliens. DHS will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country,” McLaughlin said. 

Morales-Reyes, who has lived in the United States since 1986, was arrested May 22 on suspicion that he had written three letters to law enforcement officers in Wisconsin that threatened Trump and others.

A week later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem touted Morales-Reyes’ arrest in a news release that called the dishwasher an “illegal alien,” and featured his photo, as well as an image of a handwritten letter threatening to shoot “your precious president” Trump.

But Milwaukee police who questioned Morales-Reyes quickly realized there was a problem with the allegations against him, court records show.

First, a handwriting sample Morales-Reyes provided was “completely different” from the writing on the letters and the envelopes, which bore his home address as the return address, a criminal complaint says. Also, Morales-Reyes does not speak, read, or write English fluently, while the writing in the letters was in English.

When a police detective asked Morales-Reyes, “Who would want to get [him] in trouble, [he] stated that the only person who would want to get him in [trouble] was the person who had robbed him and who law enforcement knows to be the defendant, Demetric D. Scott.”

Scott, who is detained in Milwaukee County Jail, was arrested in late 2023 for allegedly robbing Morales-Reyes and attacking him with a box cutter.

Scott, 52, told police in late May that he had written the threatening letters about Trump, and put Morales-Reyes’ address on the envelopes before they were sent on his behalf by others, to get the immigrant arrested by federal authorities so that he would be unable to testify at Scott’s criminal trial in July, court records state.

Scott hoped that his case would be dismissed when Morales-Reyes failed to appear in court, those records say.

Scott has been charged with identity theft, felony intimidation of a witness, and bail jumping in connection with the letters plot.

At the time Morales-Reyes was arrested, he had applied for a special type of visa available to victims of certain crimes.

The web page announcing the Morales-Reyes’ arrest remains up on DHS’s site, with the now discredited allegations against him.

At the bottom of that page is a “disclaimer,” which notes that he is no longer under investigation for threatening Trump.

— Dan Mangan reported from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and Halle Lukasiewicz reported from Chicago