The trump administration/DOJ have been embarrassed by this case. The trump DOJ was forced to bring Garcia back by the courts and so to compensate they made up a case against him. The trial judge rejected that case as being based on double hearsay. It seems that to get even weak witnesses, the trump DOJ are making bad deals to let real criminals go free or not be deported.
Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes is a three-time felon who has been released early from federal prison to a halfway house in exchange for his cooperation in the case.
EXCLUSIVE
Star witness against Kilmar Abrego GarcÃa was due to be deported after firing shots in a Houston suburb & reentering the U.S. illegally.
Now he’s being freed.
www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
— Maria Sacchetti - reporter - The Washington Post (@mariasacchetti.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T00:21:11.017Z
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/28/star-witness-against-kilmar-abrego-garca-was-due-be-deported-now-hes-being-freed
The Trump administration has agreed to release from prison a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community and spare him from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, according to a review of court records and official testimony.
Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, 38, has been convicted of smuggling migrants and illegally reentering the United States after having been deported. He also pleaded guilty to “deadly conduct” in the Texas incident, and is now the government’s star witness in its case against Abrego.
The government illegally deported Abrego to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador in March, and stonewalled for weeks after the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States. Officials flew the Maryland resident back into the country this month, but only after a grand jury had indicted him on charges of migrant smuggling, in part because of Hernandez’s testimony......
Hernandez is among a handful of cooperating witnesses who could help the Trump administration achieve its goal of never letting Abrego walk free in the United States again. In exchange, he has already been released early from federal prison to a halfway house and has been given permission to stay in the U.S. for at least a year.
“Otherwise he would be deported,” Peter Joseph, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, testified at Abrego’s criminal hearing June 13. The government is also likely to give him a work permit, the agent told the court.....
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes ruled on June 22 that Abrego was eligible for release from criminal custody, saying the government had failed to prove that he posed a flight risk or a danger to the community. She wrote that she put “little weight” on the claims of Hernandez and other cooperators based on their records and interest in avoiding deportation.
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