Mexico Files Criminal Complaints Over ICE Custody Deaths as a Federal Judge Frees a Convicted Plane Hijacker

Since Mexico's foreign ministry announced last week that it was filing criminal complaints with U.S. state prosecutors and asking the United Nations to investigate deportation operations following 17 deaths of Mexican nationals in U.S. custody, the fight over how ICE operates has widened into new legal and diplomatic territory. Two fresh developments this week show the pressure isn't letting up, coming from courts, from a foreign government, and from the road itself.

Mexico Escalates With Cease-and-Desist Letters

Mexico's government has sent cease-and-desist letters to U.S. detention centers where Mexican nationals have died, according to Reuters. President Claudia Sheinbaum called the situation unacceptable and framed the legal intervention as a matter for all Mexicans, according to Reuters.

A foreign government using its own prosecutors and international bodies to intervene in another country's domestic law enforcement is not standard diplomatic practice. Mexico is well within its rights to advocate for its citizens abroad, and if Mexican nationals are dying in U.S. custody under circumstances that suggest negligence or abuse, that's a legitimate concern worth investigating through normal channels, including DHS's own internal review process and, where applicable, U.S. courts.

But the complaint deserves scrutiny. Breitbart notes that Mexico's economy took in $62 billion in remittances from the U.S. in 2025, and that the outward migration of its citizens relieves pressure on Mexico's government to create jobs domestically. Those financial incentives don't disprove Mexico's stated humanitarian concern, but they are a real factor in why Mexico City is motivated to keep the flow of people and money moving in both directions. No U.S. investigation, charge, or conviction has been announced tied to any of the 17 deaths cited by Mexico's government. These are allegations pressed through diplomatic and prosecutorial channels, not established findings.

A Judge Frees a Convicted Hijacker

Separately, U.S. District Judge John E. Steele, appointed under President Bill Clinton, ordered the release of Maikel Guerra Morales on July 8, according to the New York Post. Guerra Morales was one of six Cuban nationals convicted in December 2003 for hijacking a commercial flight out of Nueva Gerona, Cuba, at knifepoint, forcing it to land in Key West.

He finished a 22-year prison sentence in December 2025 and was transferred to ICE custody for deportation. A DOJ immigration judge had already issued a final removal order for him back on March 1, 2023. Instead, Judge Steele ordered his release under ICE supervision while deportation logistics get sorted out, reportedly because it's unclear whether he'll be sent to Mexico or directly to Cuba.

Guerra Morales told Telemundo, "If the judge didn't get tough, ICE wouldn't have let me go." He said he spent 33 days at the Florida detention facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz" before being moved to the Krome Processing Center, and that he was released wearing an electronic ankle monitor. He is reportedly living in Miami now.

DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called it the release of "a criminal illegal alien who was convicted and sentenced to 22 years for hijacking a plane back into American communities," and blamed what she called an activist judge for undermining removal efforts. A man with a final removal order sitting under ICE custody receives a judicial order for release onto U.S. streets rather than a faster path to actual deportation. If the holdup is genuinely just sorting out which country takes him, that's a bureaucratic problem, not a reason to put him back in a Miami neighborhood with an ankle bracelet as the only safeguard.

A Death on a Florida Highway

A 28-year-old Mexican national was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer while fleeing ICE officers on State Road 16 in St. Johns, Florida, according to Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Dylan Bryan. He and three others had been approached by agents at a gas station in St. Augustine around 7 a.m. and ran. The truck driver tried to render aid but couldn't save him.

DHS confirmed officers were conducting an operation in the area and identified the man as a Mexican national, but said no information was available about his immigration status. Florida Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations are both investigating, according to DHS.

Homan Says the Numbers Aren't Slipping

Amid all this, border czar Tom Homan told the Daily Signal that a temporary pause on ICE vehicle stops, ordered by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem after fatal shootings during stops in Biddeford, Maine, and Houston, Texas, will not slow deportations. Homan said ICE arrested more people in June than in any prior month in the agency's history, exceeding combined totals from the FBI, ATF, DEA, and Border Patrol in past enforcement pushes. He attributed the earlier dip in numbers to a DHS funding lapse that ran from mid-February through the end of April, not a policy retreat.

Homan also cited a claim that vehicle attacks on ICE officers are up 3,400%, framing the vehicle-stop pause as a safety review of training protocols rather than a policy reversal. That statistic comes from Homan directly; no independent verification of the underlying data appears in available reporting.

None of these threads—Mexico's legal offensive, the hijacker's release, or the Florida highway death—has produced a criminal charge, conviction, or formal U.S. government finding of wrongdoing by ICE as of today. The agency is now operating under simultaneous pressure from a foreign government's prosecutors, a federal judiciary willing to override deportation timelines, and its own fatal on-the-ground incidents. The vehicle-stop pause Homan defended remains in effect while DHS reviews training, with no announced end date.