David Antonio Aviles Perez is a 35-year-old MS-13 gang member from El Salvador. His nickname is "La Bruja" — The Witch. In 2014, Salvadoran prosecutors say he and another MS-13 member chased a man through a mountainous area in La Unión, forced him to his knees, held him by the shoulders, and shot him in the chest, back, and face. In December 2025, an El Salvador court convicted him and handed down a 20-year sentence.
On August 27, 2026, a federal judge in San Diego released him from custody.
U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta — appointed by President Biden in September 2021 and confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate that December — ordered Aviles Perez freed from the Otay Mesa Detention Center, where he'd been held since ICE arrested him on March 26. Her reasoning: immigration officials held him for approximately five months without providing a bond hearing or making an individualized determination of whether he was dangerous or a flight risk.
"Although Petitioner appears to have previously been convicted following a fight with another individual in May 2023," Ohta wrote, "the government has offered no evidence that it detained him after considering those facts and making an individualized determination of his danger to the public or flight risk."
That May 2023 incident, by the way, involved Aviles Perez allegedly swinging a machete at a homeless man at Laguna Grande Park near Monterey State Beach. The weapon was later recovered from a Holiday Inn parking lot. He was charged and convicted.
So to recap the résumé: convicted of aggravated murder in El Salvador, sentenced to 20 years, wanted on an international warrant, arrested in California for swinging a machete at someone, convicted of that too, arrested again by ICE in San Diego — and released. Twice. This is now the second time Aviles Perez has walked out of California custody.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin didn't mince words. "This radical activist judge has put American lives at risk by releasing a wanted murderer," Mullin said. "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."
Mullin added: "DHS and ICE will not be deterred by these partisan games. If California's leaders won't protect Americans, DHS will."
Ohta was first appointed to the San Diego County Superior Court in December 2020 by Governor Gavin Newsom, then elevated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by Biden. Her order also barred ICE from re-detaining Aviles Perez without first providing an immigration judge's bond hearing.
The pattern is familiar by now. ICE arrests someone with a record that reads like a horror movie script. A federal judge appointed by the previous administration finds a procedural flaw. The defendant walks. DHS issues a statement. Nothing changes. California's sanctuary infrastructure doesn't just fail to cooperate with federal enforcement — it actively produces the conditions where rulings like this become inevitable.
As Fox News first reported, Aviles Perez is now walking the streets of California at this moment looking for his next victim. The man they called The Witch — convicted of forcing a victim to his knees and shooting him in the chest, back, and face — released on a paperwork argument.
Twenty years in an El Salvador prison. Five months in an American detention center. One judge. Zero accountability.