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A convicted Cuban plane hijacker who terrorized a flight crew and forced a plane to divert to Florida in 2003 is back on the streets after a Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge ordered his release from ICE custody last week. Miakel Guerra Morales, who served roughly 20 years in federal prison for aircraft piracy, had been detained by immigration authorities since December. He was awaiting deportation. That is, until U.S. District Judge John E. Steele
ruled on July 8th that he could no longer be held, despite the ongoing removal process. A report from the magistrate judge in 2009 highlights some aspects of the brutality involved in the hijacking. The hijackers— Morales and a handful of co-defendants—wielded the plane’s emergency axes and several knives in an attempt to control the pilot and crew. Knives were, on multiple occasions, pressed against the throats of some individuals. Morales was, according to the document, one of two assailants who pushed a steward "face down to the floor of the cabin" and "held a knife to his throat as they bound his hands behind him with a cord." During the chaos, the flight technician grabbed an axe to fight back, but reportedly stopped when he heard shouting from the passenger cabin that the hijackers had taken children hostage. READ MORE: Obama-Appointed Activist Judge Talwani Thwarts Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Crackdown Judge Hannah Dugan, Who Helped Illegal Alien Evade ICE, Gets Unbelievable Slap on the Wrist Defense lawyers portrayed the incident as a “freedom flight” out of Cuba, claiming the crew and an airport security guard were complicit. They alleged that the crew helped smuggle the knives aboard and recruited the six men to carry out what was meant to appear as a hijacking. The judge in their case rejected efforts to portray the hijacking as political, while prosecutors argued that escaping your country of origin does not justify hijacking a civilian airliner filled with passengers (including children), holding knives and axes to crew members’ throats, taking hostages, binding people, issuing death threats, and endangering dozens of lives. Not to mention, hijacking a plane headed to the United States just two years after 9/11 was incredibly ill-advised. Guerra, meanwhile, credited the judge for his recent release. "If the judge hadn't been firm, ICE wouldn't have let me go," he said, according to Cuba Headlines. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was not pleased with Steele's decision. “This activist judge forced ICE to release a criminal illegal alien who was convicted and sentenced to 22 years for hijacking a plane back into American communities,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “This is 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 country." Steele ordered his release under supervision. That means immigration agents must now monitor him in the community while they continue efforts to deport him. Bis insists DHS will "continue to fight for the detention and removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country." |
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