A suspected MS-13 member described by authorities as a machete-wielding enforcer nicknamed “the witch” has been released from federal custody in California while wanted in El Salvador on an aggravated murder warrant.
David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, was arrested by ICE agents in San Diego in April after officials said an international warrant linked him to an aggravated murder case.
He had remained in federal custody as authorities pursued his removal from the United States.
Before that process was completed, however, federal Judge Jinsook Ohta ordered Aviles Perez released from a Southern California ICE detention facility, setting a deadline of 5 p.m. the following day after issuing the order last Wednesday.
A federal law enforcement official familiar with the case sharply criticized the ruling.
“Criminal aliens are being released from ICE custody by activist judges on courts across the country,” said the official, who requested anonymity.
“These judges are becoming emboldened by the failure of lower-level federal prosecutors to appeal their increasingly extreme decisions due to staffing and resource constraints,” the official told The California Post. “We should all feel scandalized by that.”
In her decision, Ohta said Aviles Perez — despite the active aggravated murder warrant in El Salvador — must be released unless federal authorities can show at a bail hearing that he is a danger to the community or likely to flee.
The release comes despite the allegations against Aviles Perez, who was wanted in El Salvador in connection with a brutal gang murder.
The judge previously served as an attorney before being appointed to the San Diego County Superior Court in 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
She was appointed to the federal bench in the Southern District of California by then-President Joe Biden in 2021.
Ohta did not respond to a request for comment.
Aviles Perez has a record of violence in the US as well as abroad. He was arrested in 2023 for assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly swung a machete at a man in Monterey, California, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and police documents.
The illegal immigrant was released under California’s sanctuary laws and remained at large until he was arrested by ICE, DHS officials said.
Until last Thursday, he was being held as he awaits his return to El Salvador to serve his sentence for a 2014 murder. Now he’s back on the streets.
In December, officials in El Salvador sentenced Aviles Perez to 20 years in prison on a charge of aggravated homicide for the execution of an MS-13 adversary, authorities there reported.
In July 2014, Aviles Perez and an accomplice named Ismael Enrique Mendoza Flores murdered a man in the town of Yucuaiquín in El Salvador’s eastern state of La Union, according to the country’s attorney general.
Aviles Perez, also known as “la bruja” or “the witch,” and his fellow gang members followed the victim and shot at him during a dispute, according to an alert issued by the country’s attorney general on Dec. 16.
Later, more henchman arrived “and forced [the victim] to stop and kneel, holding him by the shoulders, while Ismael and David arrived,” the Salvadoran prosecution’s indictment states.
The pair then “shot the victim in the chest, back, and face,” according to the attorney general’s report, which identified both men as “active members of MS-13.”
It’s unclear how or when Aviles Perez entered the US, but he first appeared on California law enforcement’s radar nearly a decade after the El Salvador murder.
On Aug. 2, 2023, Monterey police arrested Aviles Perez after he “swung a machete” at a homeless man following an argument at Laguna Grande Park near Monterey State Beach, according to an incident report obtained by The Post.
After the attack, Aviles Perez “hid the machete which was later recovered in the Holiday Inn parking lot,” the report states. He was identified as a transient at the time of his arrest.
He was charged and convicted, according to Monterey prosecutors, but was ultimately released back onto the streets.
DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said California’s sanctuary policies allowed Aviles Perez to walk free despite charges of assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance and petty theft.
She slammed the law, saying his release “back into California neighborhoods put American lives at risk.”
Aviles Perez’s release came as another gang-affiliated Salvadoran, Luis Valle, was also ordered released from ICE custody while awaiting removal.
Valle, a convicted first-degree murderer, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for a murder he committed in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. He was released from state prison on parole just last year.
Last Wednesday, Linda Lopez, another judge on the same court as Ohta, ordered Valle released from ICE detention, ruling there is “good reason to believe that there is no significant likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Like Ohta, Lopez is a former attorney who was nominated for her federal judgeship by Biden in 2021.
Lopez did not respond to a request for comment on her decision to release Valle.
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