A federal judge appointed by President Joe Biden ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who carries an Interpol Red Notice tied to a homicide case in his home country, and did so, federal officials say, without knowing the man was wanted for murder.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, sitting in Rhode Island, issued the release order on April 28 for Bryan Rafael Gomez. The Department of Homeland Security says Gomez is in the country illegally, has a standing deportation order, and has been wanted by Dominican authorities since January 2023 in connection with a killing there.
The case has drawn sharp condemnation from DHS and raised pointed questions about the legal reasoning a federal judge used to put a man with an international homicide warrant back on American streets.
The sequence of events is straightforward. On April 4, the Worcester Police Department in Massachusetts arrested Gomez on charges of assault and battery. ICE agents lodged a detainer against him, and local police honored it. After Gomez finished his time in local custody, he was transferred to federal immigration authorities, as Breitbart News reported.
Then came DuBose's ruling. On April 28, the judge ordered Gomez released from ICE custody. Her legal rationale, laid out in the order, turned on a question of detention authority. DuBose ruled that ICE had relied on a statute meant for migrants apprehended at the border, a provision she said did not apply to Gomez because he was arrested by local police inside the United States, Fox News reported. She found he was entitled to a bond hearing rather than mandatory detention.
Put plainly: a man with a deportation order, an Interpol Red Notice for homicide, and a fresh assault charge walked out of federal custody because a judge decided the government cited the wrong line of the immigration code.
DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis responded on Thursday evening with language that left no room for ambiguity. She called DuBose "an activist judge" and framed the release as a direct obstacle to the administration's enforcement mission.
Bis told reporters:
"Bryan Rafael Gomez is a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with an international warrant for homicide. An activist judge appointed by Joe Biden released this wanted murderer back into American communities."
She added that the ruling was "yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump's mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our communities."
The pattern of Biden-appointed judges drawing accusations of activism in immigration cases is not new. But the facts of this case, a murder suspect freed on what amounts to a procedural technicality, give the charge a harder edge than usual.
The Department of Justice, meanwhile, moved to defend DuBose. U.S. Attorney Charles C. Calenda issued a statement through the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island, pointing to a recent filing in the case.
Calenda stated:
"As our recent filing in this matter makes clear, Judge DuBose did not have knowledge at the time of her ruling that Gomez was wanted by authorities in the Dominican Republic."
That defense raises its own uncomfortable question: How does a federal court issue a release order for a detained illegal immigrant with a deportation order and an Interpol Red Notice, and nobody in the process flags the homicide warrant?
DuBose's reasoning rested on a narrow statutory distinction. ICE detained Gomez under an authority designed for migrants caught at or near the border. Because Gomez was arrested by local police inside the country, DuBose ruled the authority did not apply and that he was entitled to a bond hearing instead, the New York Post reported.
On paper, the distinction may have legal merit in the abstract. In practice, it produced a result that most Americans would find indefensible: a man wanted internationally for murder, already charged with assault in the United States, released from the custody of the one agency equipped to remove him from the country.
The episode fits a broader pattern of federal judges intervening in immigration enforcement on procedural grounds while the real-world consequences fall on the communities left to absorb the risk. Judges in other high-profile immigration cases have issued similar release orders that drew public backlash, and the friction between the judiciary and enforcement agencies shows no sign of easing.
DHS has described Gomez as a man with a deportation order already on file. That means the federal government had already determined he had no legal right to remain in the United States. The Interpol Red Notice, an international alert requesting the location and provisional arrest of a wanted person, added a layer of urgency that apparently never reached the courtroom before DuBose signed the order.
Several questions hang over this case. The most pressing: Where is Bryan Rafael Gomez now? The available information does not say whether he has been physically released, re-detained, or located since the April 28 order. Nor does it specify which facility held him before the ruling.
The case number and full docket for the proceeding have not been publicly identified in the reporting so far. The underlying facts of the Dominican Republic homicide case, who was killed, what evidence exists, and whether extradition has been pursued, remain unclear from the public record.
The ongoing friction between federal judges and the Justice Department over immigration enforcement has become one of the defining legal battles of the current administration. Each new case adds another data point to a pattern that voters can see plainly: judges appointed during the Biden era are repeatedly intervening to slow or block the removal of illegal immigrants, even those with serious criminal histories.
Calenda's defense, that DuBose simply didn't know about the murder warrant, may be technically accurate. But it only deepens the concern. If the system that feeds information to federal judges before they release detained immigrants cannot surface an Interpol Red Notice for homicide, the system is failing at a basic level.
And if ICE cited the wrong detention statute, the agency bears responsibility for that procedural misstep. But the answer to a paperwork error is not to release a murder suspect. It is to correct the paperwork.
The administration has made clear that removing criminal illegal immigrants is a top priority. Federal courts at multiple levels have been drawn into the fight over how far that enforcement authority extends. This case in Rhode Island will likely become Exhibit A for those who argue that the judiciary has become an obstacle to public safety rather than a guardian of it.
DHS has the facts on its side: a deportation order, an Interpol Red Notice, an assault charge, and a homicide warrant stretching back more than two years. Judge DuBose had a statutory argument. The public has a man wanted for murder who is no longer in federal custody.
When the legal process produces an outcome that common sense cannot defend, the problem isn't with common sense.
