Brandon Ortiz-Vite is serving 39 to 102 years in a Michigan prison for shooting 25-year-old Ruby Garcia multiple times and dumping her body along the side of the road in Grand Rapids. He's a 27-year-old illegal immigrant whose DACA status expired in 2019, who was deported after a DUI arrest in 2020 and then snuck back into the country illegally.
He just filed a handwritten lawsuit in federal court demanding $75 million, a public apology from President Trump, oh, and he wants United States citizenship.
Ortiz-Vite's complaint names both President Trump and White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Steven Cheung as defendants. His grievance is that Trump talked about how he committed cold blooded murder during his 2024 presidential campaign. Ortiz-Vite claims Trump featuring his mugshot in commercials caused him "humiliation" and led to mockery from prison staff and fellow inmates at Kent County Jail in Grand Rapids.
"I was put into a category. Who I was as a person no longer mattered!" Ortiz-Vite wrote in his complaint. He added that "the shame it brought to my family name is a reality I have to live with now."
The shame he has to live with. Poor Brandon. Ruby Garcia's family will never get to talk to her again.
He also wrote: "I took full responsibility for my actions but for them to use my case for political gain on TV was unjust." Which is an interesting definition of "taking full responsibility" — filing a $75 million lawsuit because the President told the country what you did.
Matthew Borgula, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, told Fox News the suit has virtually no chance. "Federal law requires courts to screen prisoner suits before anyone is served," Borgula explained. He noted that "presidential immunity covers official acts, and campaign statements can fall outside it," but added the more fundamental problem: "Trump's statements on the Ortiz-Vite case were substantially true."
That's the part that makes this almost impressive in its audacity. The man shot his girlfriend multiple times in March 2024 and left her body on the side of a highway. Trump called him a problem. And now a convicted murderer — an illegal immigrant who was already deported once and snuck back in — wants $75 million and a public apology because his feelings got hurt on television.
Former Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon responded to the case by pointing out the broader pattern: "As long as we have Democrats jetting to other countries to coddle criminal illegal aliens, this kind of entitlement will keep growing." She was referring to the time Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, the MS-13 gang member who was deported after being convicted of domestic abuse. She's not wrong. When the political culture tells people that immigration enforcement is the real crime, you eventually get a convicted killer who genuinely believes he's the victim.
The lawsuit will probably be dismissed but the fact that an illegal alien convicted of murder had the balls to file it at all tells you something about the incentive structure Democrats have built.
That's not a legal strategy. That's a worldview. And he didn't come up with it on his own.