Immigrant said to be framed for writing Trump threat letters remains detained, for now
An undocumented immigrant who prosecutors say was framed by a jail inmate for writing threatening letters about President Donald Trump was ordered Wednesday to remain detained by an immigration judge in Chicago to give a government lawyer more time to review evidence in the case.
But an attorney for the immigrant Ramon Morales-Reyes, said he was hopeful that the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, resident would be released on bond after another immigration court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
The judge at the hearing will consider whether the 54-year-old Morales-Reyes is a flight risk or a danger to the community, said Cain Oulahan, his lawyer.
Oulahan said that the Mexican national is eligible for bond.
Morales-Reyes, who works as a dishwasher, has lived in the United States since 1986, has three children who are U.S. citizens and owns a home in Milwaukee, the attorney said.
Oulahan told CNBC in an interview after the hearing that Morales-Reyes' family is "worried."
'They're having a hard time," the lawyer said. "They really want to see him again, but they're trying to keep a low profile."
Oulahan said, "There were threats on social media" directed at the family after his arrest was announced in late May by the Department of Homeland Security.
Morales-Reyes, who appeared via a video link at Wednesday's hearing, has been detained in a Wisconsin jail in the immigration case since May 22, when he was arrested outside his daughter's school on suspicion of writing the letters about Trump.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem touted his arrest more than a week later.
"Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars," Noem said on May 28.
But questions about whether Morales-Reyes actually wrote the letters sent threatening Trump and others to three law enforcement offices in Wisconsin were raised as early as May 24, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee District Attorney's Office on Monday.
That complaint says that a man named Demetric Scott confessed to writing those letters — which bore Morales-Reyes' return address — from jail in a bid to get the immigrant deported so that he would be unavailable to testify at Scott's trial on armed robbery and battery charges in July.
That case relates to Scott's alleged robbery of Morales-Reyes in 2023.
Scott, a 52-year-old with a long criminal record, is now charged with identity theft, felony intimidation of a witness, and bail jumping in connection with the letters threatening Trump.
The Milwaukee DA's Office on Wednesday declined to answer when CNBC asked when it notified DHS that Scott had confessed to writing the letters, citing the fact that the case is pending.
CNBC has asked DHS when it was notified of the confession.
"It does seem to me like there was some knowledge by local law enforcement that he didn't write the letters," Oulahan, the lawyer for Morales-Reyes, told CNBC.
A month before being detained, Morales-Reyes had an application for a special visa for immigrants who are crime victims accepted for processing by the federal government.
At Wednesday's bond hearing for Morales-Reyes in Chicago immigration court in Chicago, DHS attorney Caitlin Corcoran told Judge Carla Espinoza that she needed time to review the DA's criminal complaint against Scott, which she had only received on Tuesday evening. Corcoran did not argue against Morales-Reyes' eligibility for bond.
DHS has said Morales-Reyes has a criminal record that includes arrests for "felony hit-and-run, criminal damage to property and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier."
But at Wednesday's hearing, Corcoran said she does not have proof that Morales-Reyes was convicted of the hit and run, which occurred in 1996. The DHS lawyer said the immigrant does have a 1996 conviction for disorderly conduct.
Oulahan told CNBC it is not clear if the immigrant was convicted of the hit-and-run, but said that even if he had been it would not be a so-called crime of moral turpitude that would make him ineligible for bond in the detention case.
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