Accused Woman-Beating Illegal Immigrant Who Led Hunger Strike Walks Free From ICE Custody

The leader of the hunger strike inside an ICE detention center in New Jersey was released from federal custody Tuesday night, despite his previous arrest for domestic assault.

Gabriela Soto, the wife of Martin Soto, a Peruvian illegal immigrant, claimed her husband “was abducted” by ICE officers while out buying diapers in February. The sob story quickly unraveled after The Daily Wire uncovered a police report showing that he was actually taken into ICE custody after being arrested by local officers for a violent domestic assault.

Soto later filed a petition to contest his detention, and the request was ultimately granted, sources with knowledge of the case told The Daily Wire. A video circulating on social media showed the moment Soto walked free from ICE’s Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and into his wife’s arms Tuesday night.

The February police report stated that Martin Soto “purposely” caused “bodily injury” to an unnamed female victim “specifically by using his hands, both opened and closed to strike” her “in her face, causing minor scratches and cuts to her face and neck.”

Soto then allegedly “placed a hand over” her “mouth so she could not scream for help,” according to the report.

Gabriela led protests outside Delaney Hall over what she alleged were inhumane conditions inside and said that the stress caused her to have a miscarriage. The wife also raised more than $67,000 on GoFundMe as she claimed her husband “committed no harm.”

Scott Mechkowski, a visiting fellow for deportation studies at the Oversight Project, told The Daily Wire that illegal immigrants, some with records, often find success filing habeas petitions as Soto did.  He said the tool is a major threat to the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

“It’s not over until the alien wins,” Mechkowski, who formerly served as the ICE New York field office deputy director, said. “I’ve seen this over and over and over so this is not surprising to me.”

Martin Soto’s habeas petition is one of 83,000 such challenges that have been filed by ICE detainees since President Donald Trump’s second term commenced, according to ProPublica. That is more than the number of habeas petitions filed over the last three administrations combined.

A habeas petition moves a detainee’s case out of the immigration court system and into the district courts, where judges have “a lot more remedies to give them than an immigration judge,” United States Attorney Timothy Courchaine previously told The Daily Wire.

“This is why mass deportations aren’t as easy as the general public thinks,” Mechkowski said. “You just don’t take people and get rid of them. There’s a process.”

“What the attorneys do is they block, they block, they block, they block, and they keep doing this … it’s like a 15-round fight. They’re applying for every form of relief under the sun,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On February 1, police in Kearny, New Jersey, arrested Soto for simple assault stemming from a domestic violence incident, according to the police records. ICE officers showed up at the Hudson County Correctional Center on February 2 and took Soto into federal custody.

Media outlets and Democratic politicians largely embraced the sob story, accepting Gabriela’s account of Martin’s arrest. She claimed that on February 1 she “suddenly got a phone call from a number listed as “‘prison/jail'” “after Martin stepped out to get diapers” for their baby.

At that time, her husband was still in local custody for the alleged domestic violence incident. He was only later moved to Delaney Hall, where detainees claiming to be engaged in a hunger strike were actually purchasing snacks — including sushi and clams — from the commissary, as The Daily Wire reported.

In May, ICE moved him to the detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

In a July conversation with The Daily Wire, Gabriela Soto claimed she was “not aware” of the police report. When asked to review the contents of the report, she confirmed that it was her husband’s information, but denied the allegations of domestic abuse.

“My husband never got arrested by Kearny PD he left the house on February 1 at 530pm,” she wrote in an Instagram message. “I have messages and locations and everything for proof from that afternoon. And I have a call from Delaney Hall at 1030 ish at night when he called me.”

“My husband will NEVER do nothing to harm his family or his marriage,” she added. “I know exactly where he was and what he does and who he talks too [sic].”

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