Left: Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos (Alexandria Sheriff’s Office). Right: Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with reporters at the White House, Tuesday, April 8, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
An “unusual” situation is playing out in a Virginia federal court as the U.S. Department of Justice wants charges dropped against a man previously and loudly accused of being a high-profile gang leader. Meanwhile, the defendant is asking a judge to keep the case alive.
On March 27, Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, 24, was charged with one count of possession of a firearm by an undocumented immigrant.
At a press conference that day, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi turned the arrest into a marquee case by declaring Villatoro Santos “one of the top members and head of the East Coast” of MS-13.
“Very violent crimes, anything you can associate with MS-13,” Bondi asserted. “He was the leader over it — all of the violent crimes.”
Also in attendance at the televised press conference were FBI Director Kash Patel, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert.
Patel also posted about the significance of the arrest.
“I can now confirm that earlier this morning, law enforcement personnel arrested a top MS-13 leader in Virginia,” the FBI director wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Outstanding work from @AGPamBondi, our brave agents, @CBP, @GovernorVA, and our state and local partners. This is a massive victory for a safer America. Justice is coming.”
Even President Donald Trump commented on the arrest of Villatoro Santos in a post on Truth Social that same day, writing: “Just captured a major leader of MS13. Tom HOMAN is a superstar.”
On April 1, probable cause for the lone gun charge against the defendant was found by one of the three magistrate judges who have been assigned to — and have since been quickly shuttled off of — the case.
Exactly one week later, the federal public defender’s office withdrew from the case and Villatoro Santos obtained private counsel.
The next day, the government moved to dismiss.
The defendant’s new attorney, Muhammad Elsayed, rubbished the development in a motion to delay entry of dismissal filed Tuesday.
“Despite these breathless pronouncements and the massive publicity that resulted, with every search engine tying Henrry Villatoro Santos to the Government’s claim that he is a ‘top leader’ of MS-13, less than two weeks after Mr. Villatoro Santos’s arrest, the Government filed a Motion to Dismiss the case without prejudice, writing that ‘the government no longer wishes to pursue the instant prosecution at this time,”” the motion reads.
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To hear the defense tell it, the government is intent on evading the constitutional constraints mandated in a criminal case by turning Villatoro Santos’ case into a more expeditious immigration matter.
“The Government now intends to pursue removal proceedings against Mr. Villatoro Santos pursuant to an ICE detainer,” the defense motion continues. “If and when this Court enters an Order dismissing this case, Mr. Villatoro Santos will be immediately transferred to ICE custody. The danger of Mr. Villatoro Santos being unlawfully deported by ICE without due process and removed to El Salvador, where he would almost certainly be immediately detained at one of the worst prisons in the world without any right to contest his removal, is substantial, both in light of the Government’s recent actions and the very public pronouncements in this particular case.”
The motion briefly rehashes some of the recent history of immigration cases pursued by the second Trump administration that have earned the opprobrium of federal courts — including the mass deportation case where “immigrants [were] deported despite” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order to the contrary and then “handed over to Salvadoran authorities, who frog marched them into one of the most notorious mega-prisons in the world, Centro de Confinamiento de Terrorismo (CECOT).”
Elsayed also notes how the government admittedly and “wrongfully deported” Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father with protected status who was shipped off to that same prison in El Salvador where there is a “well-documented history of torture, ill-treatment, appalling conditions, and extreme overcrowding.”
In no uncertain terms, Villatoro Santos’ attorney believes such treatment is what the Trump administration has in store for his client.
The defense motion argues this explicitly, at length:
Based on this recent pattern of abuse of process and defiance of court orders by immigration enforcement officials, there is a substantial risk that if this Court enters a dismissal order at this time that Mr. Villatoro Santos may be immediately deported without due process and before he has an opportunity to retain immigration counsel and assert any defenses he may have to removal. In that event, it is almost certain that Salvadoran authorities would immediately detain him upon arriving in El Salvador and detain him indefinitely at CECOT without any trial or due process based on the United States Government’s public pronouncements that he is a “top leader” of MS-13. The risk of this turning effectively into a life sentence without any due process is very real.
“The undersigned is keenly aware of the unusual nature of this motion,” Elsayed writes. “But these are unusual times.”
The strange turn of events in the Villatoro Santo case has resulted in substantial media interest — and puzzled at least one expert.
“Historically and consistently, if someone truly is a leader of a violent gang, we would always prosecute them first and convict them first — and make sure they can’t get back into the country,” former federal prosecutor Scott Fredericksen told CBS News.
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The government, for its part, is not being shy about its ultimate goal.
When asked why the case was being dropped, a spokesperson for Bondi reportedly sent CBS a video from the original press conference where she said Villatoro Santos “won’t be in this country much longer.”
On Thursday morning, Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick scheduled a hearing on the dismissal motions for April 15 — and ordered U.S. Marshals to make sure the defendant is in attendance.
