A Venezuelan illegal immigrant with suspected gang ties was released into the United States last year before “terrorizing” New York City but has yet to be deported, according to a House committee report and other documents obtained exclusively by The Washington Post.
Department of Homeland Security officials have for months rejected congressional requests regarding Daniel Hernandez Martinez, 30, a migrant who The Washington Post reported last September had been arrested six times in New York on 14 charges and had been released.
Now, the House Judiciary Committee has received Martinez’s full Department of Homeland Security records, and a 10-page report released Wednesday found that the “alleged member of the Tren de Aragua gang” committed a total of “at least 22 crimes” in New York City between June and November 2023.
According to records, U.S. Border Patrol first encountered Martinez on Jan. 23, 2023, “near Ysleta, Texas.”
A Homeland Security source told The Post that when he was arrested in January, Border Patrol agents flagged him as a suspected member of Tren de Aragua and turned him back to Mexico under a Trump-era Title 42 COVID-19 expulsion order.
Investigators likely couldn’t confirm his gang membership because they didn’t have access to Venezuelan databases, the people said.
He then secretly returned to the United States again at an unknown date and place.
A few months later, Hernandez was indicted in New York over a six-month period on charges including petty theft, unlawful possession of a weapon and assault.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) first stepped in after the suspected gang member’s seventh encounter with the NYPD, issuing a detention order against him on Sept. 1, 2023.
Hernandez then served a short sentence at Rikers Island before being released again in November 2023 and being arrested two more times.
He was ordered deported in June 2024, but because Venezuela has stopped accepting deportation flights, sources say he will likely stay here indefinitely.
Hernandez is in ICE custody in Buffalo, New York.
The Judiciary Committee report was supported in the past by Vice President Kamala Harris, among others. Generous refuge and Mass amnesty policy — and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
According to the Justice Department report, one of the guidelines in a memorandum issued by Mayorkas on Sept. 30, 2021, “limits ICE officers’ authority to arrest criminal aliens.”
The memo was one of several Biden administration policies that prompted House Republicans to impeach Mayorkas in February, accusing him of ignoring federal immigration law.
“In less than four years, the Biden-Harris administration will
“There are more than 5.4 million illegal immigrants in the United States, and an additional 1.9 million illegal immigrants fled to the United States as ‘fugitives’ during the same period,” the memo also states.
“The chaos on the southwest border, created and fueled by the radical policies of President Joe Biden and his ‘border agent’ Vice President Kamala Harris, is destabilizing security in the country.”
ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
