Dem judge resigns after ICE arrests suspected Tren de Aragua gangster at his home
A Democrat judge in New Mexico resigned last month just days after a suspected member of the violent Tren de Aragua gang was arrested at his residence.
On March 3, Judge Jose "Joel" Cano, magistrate of Doña Ana County, sent a letter to various court staff, including 3rd Judicial District Chief Judge Conrad Perea, announcing that he would step down from his seat effective March 21.
"Working with each of you has been a very rewarding experience for which I will remain eternally grateful," he wrote, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Just three days before Cano sent the resignation letter, on February 28, ICE agents conducted a search warrant on his home in connection with Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Venezuela and suspected TDA gangster who was living there.
Ortega-Lopez broke into the U.S. by scaling a barbed-wire fence near Eagle Pass, Texas, at the height of the Biden border crisis in December 2023, Breitbart reported, citing court documents. He spent three days at a detention facility in South Laredo before he was released because of overcrowding.
He then moved in with five other people in El Paso and began working in construction and doing other odd jobs. At some point, he crossed paths with Nancy Cano, wife of ex-Judge Cano, who offered Ortega-Lopez the chance to live in a casita behind the home the couple shares in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Ortega-Lopez apparently accepted the offer because last April, he filed a request for immigration relief and listed the judge's address as his current residence. Breitbart indicated that the judge "allowed" him to do so.
Judge Damian Martinez initially opted to release him, reportedly stating that he did not believe Judge Cano 'would just let anybody live in his property.'
Far from mere casual acquaintances, Ortega-Lopez and Cano apparently spent considerable time together. Prosecutors introduced photos and videos posted to social media that showed the two posing together.
What's more, the photos and videos revealed that on at least one occasion, Ortega-Lopez and several other illegal aliens went to the local gun range, where they fired various firearms. One photo reportedly showed Ortega-Lopez double-fisting an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, while in another photo, he allegedly handled another AR-style rifle outfitted with a suppressor.
Video footage also showed Ortega-Lopez firing the rifle until it ran out of bullets, according to Breitbart. He then reloaded the gun with a fresh magazine and proceeded to fire it again.
During their investigation, agents discovered a cache of weapons at the nearby home of April Cano, identified as Nancy Cano's daughter. Prosecutors alleged that after meeting Ortega-Lopez, April Cano "allowed him to hold and sometimes shoot various firearms" she owns.
In some of the social media photos, Ortega-Lopez can be seen holding some of April Cano's firearms, the Journal said. His TDA tattoos are reportedly visible in both the photos and videos.
Ortega-Lopez's cell phone also contains images of decapitated and mutilated bodies, reported Breitbart, which claimed to have viewed the gruesome images.
Ortega-Lopez was arrested on February 28 and currently faces a federal charge of unlawful alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition. At a detention hearing on March 14, U.S. Magistrate Judge Damian Martinez initially opted to release him, reportedly stating that he did not believe Judge Cano "would just let anybody live in his property."
Prosecutors immediately filed an appeal of his release and included the quotation from Judge Martinez in their motion.
Martinez also reportedly wanted to consider whether Mrs. Cano might be considered a third-party custodian of Ortega-Lopez.
For now, Ortega-Lopez remains in custody without bond at the Doña Ana County Detention Center for "violation [of] federal immigration laws," jail records show.
Joel and Nancy Cano declined a request for comment from the Journal, claiming they did not want to jeopardize any of Ortega-Lopez's pending legal cases. Whether any of the Canos will face charges on account of their association with Ortega-Lopez remains unclear.
Joel Cano is a former police officer who first ran for the county magistrate position as a Democrat in 2010. He then kept his seat by running unopposed in subsequent elections, including his most recent re-election in 2022.
Earlier this year, the U.S. government declared Tren de Aragua to be a foreign terrorist organization.
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Musk’s Wisconsin bombshell: Yes, illegal aliens VOTED with SSNs during Biden era
The attacks on Tesla have escalated into full-blown domestic terrorism. What exactly are these violent far-leftists trying to prove?
Conservative influencer and co-host of "Steve Bannon’s War Room” Natalie Winters answered this question in a recent X post. On April 1, she wrote, “They’re doing to Teslas what they want to do to Trump supporters. This is not a protest. It’s a color revolution.”
“This post from Natalie Winters on X has been replaying in my head all day because I think it's not only pithy, it encapsulates the reality of the situation,” says Liz Wheeler, host of “The Liz Wheeler show.”
“Keep in mind what is actually being done to Teslas. They're not just being keyed; Tesla owners aren't just finding nasty notes on their vehicles. … We're talking firebombing, shots being fired, Molotov cocktails being hurled at Tesla showrooms,” she continues.
How does the left justify such violence?
Liz’s answer is simple and profound: “The left and the mainstream media has spent the past decade branding Donald Trump as an authoritarian Nazi tyrant” and “branding you as fascist sympathizer,” so “when they hurl these Molotov cocktails … they feel justified because they've been told if they don't stop you by any means necessary that you're going to commit some heinous genocide” against “marginalized people.”
Elon Musk has become a prime target, she explains, because “he is exposing the nexus of the entire plot to destroy America.”
“It's always been part of the left's anti-American strategy to flood the United States with illegal aliens” for the purpose of destroying our welfare and education systems, says Liz. “Elon Musk by DOGEing the federal government and exposing this kind of fraud is hovering over the target.”
And he’s doing it unapologetically. On March 30, at a town hall event in Wisconsin, Musk, alongside his longtime associate Antonio Gracias, exposed the millions of noncitizens who got Social Security numbers during Biden’s presidency.
“It was a massive, large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent, deep-blue one-party state from which there would be no escape,” Musk said frankly.
“This is true. The defaults in the system, from Social Security to all of the benefit programs, have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people and minimum collection. We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid,” Gracias added.
The DOGE team then looked at voting records from the 5.5 million illegal immigrants who had obtained Social Security numbers during Biden’s era and found that some of this population was not only registered to vote but actually did vote.
“We've been gaslit as conservatives for years by the left saying, ‘You don't have any evidence that there's any kind of voter fraud that's happening,”’ Liz recalls. “Well, here’s your evidence.”
Musk’s next investigation, he revealed, will be into members of Congress who despite earning $200,000 a year have net worths in the multimillions.
“Please, Elon, I beg of you, please start your investigation with Nancy Pelosi,” Liz pleads.
To hear more of her commentary, watch the clip above.
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Trump Proves The Border Bill Pushed By GOP Leaders Under Biden Was Never Necessary
Mark Levin applauds Stephen Miller’s epic takedown of Jake Tapper’s illegal immigration narrative: ‘Who’s going to pick the lettuce?!’
Leftists love to clutch their pearls over the illegal immigrants who harvest our crops, but they never want to talk about the ones who commit violent crimes, the ones who peddle drugs throughout the country, or the ones who are just on the taxpayer dole with no intention of ever contributing to the system.
“We just let 20 million people in here; 325,000 kids are missing,” and yet Democrats continue to worry about “who’s going to pick the lettuce,” sighs Mark Levin.
CNN’s Jake Tapper is one of those liberals. Thankfully, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller didn’t let him get away with perpetuating the narrative that the majority of illegal immigrants are working on farms.
Levin plays the clip of Tapper’s humiliating experience being schooled with facts on his own show.
“The Department of Agriculture says that between 2020 and 2022, 42% of crop workers were undocumented immigrants,” Tapper began. “How does President Trump make sure that the effort to deport people who are not in this country legally doesn't end up hurting Americans who want safe borders, absolutely, but also don't want to see even more higher prices in groceries?”
“I'm sure it's not your position, Jake, you're just asking the question, that we should supply America's food with exploitative illegal alien labor,” Miller said with a not-so-subtle hint of sarcasm.
“Only 1% of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles. ... None of those illegal aliens are doing farm work,” he corrected.
When Tapper accused him of changing the subject, Miller only got more lethal:
“The illegal aliens [Joe Biden] brought in are from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Nicaragua. They are not doing farm work. They are in our cities collecting welfare. As for the farmers, there is a guest worker program that President Trump supports. Over time, as well, we will transition into automation, so we'll never have to have this conversation ever again.”
“But there's no universe in which this nation is going to allow the previous president to flood our nation with millions and millions of illegal aliens who just get to stay here, and we are especially not going to allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape and murder our citizens, so we are going to unapologetically enforce our immigration laws, and as I'm sure you will celebrate, we are going to unleash the power and might of the U.S. government to eradicate the presence of transnational threats on our soil.”
All the while Miller was delivering this epic jeremiad, Tapper’s brows were knitted together; he stacked and re-stacked papers with a painful grimace on his face.
Levin can’t help but laugh at how Miller easily obliterated the leftist narrative that all illegal immigrants are farm workers all while hinting at the notion that Tapper supports exploitative illegal alien labor and doesn’t care about the dangers facing American citizens.
He then breaks down how most foreigners in our agricultural industry are actually doing work legally via work visas. To hear it, and see the footage of Tapper’s brutal schooling, watch the clip above.
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