Federal immigration authorities intend to deport a Cuban man charged with murder in the beheading of a merchant at a Dallas motel.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lodged a detainer Friday against Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, a 37-year-old illegal immigrant with a history of arrests that include carjacking in California, aggravated assault in Texas and auto theft in South Florida.
Cobos-Martinez was in federal immigration custody as recently as January. However, ICE officials said the Biden administration ordered him to be released on supervised release because Cuba wouldn’t accept him back due to his criminal history.
Dallas police took him into custody Wednesday after he allegedly decapitated a man with a machete.
“This vile monster beheaded this man in front of his wife and child and proceeded to kick the victims’ head on the ground,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “This gruesome, savage slaying of a victim at a motel by Yordanis Cobos-Martinez was completely preventable if this criminal illegal alien was not released into our country by the Biden Administration since Cuba would not take him back.”
“This is exactly why we are removing criminal illegal aliens to third countries,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem are no longer allowing barbaric criminals to indefinitely remain in America.”
She said Cobos-Martinez could be sent to Eswatini, Uganda, South Sudan or El Salvador’s mega prison for terrorists and gang members.
Dallas police arrested Cobos-Martinez after he was linked to the slaying of Chandra Nagamallaiah.
Authorities said officers arrived at the motel for a reported stabbing around 9:30 a.m. Sept. 10. They soon located the headless victim inside the property.
A witness told police that Cobos-Martinez, who was living and working at the motel, got into an argument with Mr. Nagamallaiah.
The suspect then grabbed a machete and chased after Mr. Nagamallaiah, who tripped and fell while running away from his attacker.
“He just started whacking at his neck,” the witness said, according to an arrest affidavit. “Once he decapitated him, he kicked the head and then he picked it up and then he threw it in the trash can. I couldn’t believe he would do another human being like that.”
The affidavit said police handcuffed a blood-soaked Cobos-Martinez moments after they arrived. He was still wielding the machete when authorities approached him.
Cobos-Martinez has a series of arrests in at least three other states.
In February 2017, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said they arrested the Cuban national after he was accused of stealing a Mercedes in Miami-Dade County.
In June of that same year, authorities in South Lake Tahoe, California, said a naked and heavily intoxicated Cobos-Martinez tried to drag a woman out of her car.
Bystanders intervened, said police said, who charged him with carjacking and false imprisonment.
Cobos-Martinez fled California and in 2018 authorities in Harris County, Texas, charged him with indecency with a child after he allegedly assaulted a 14-year-old girl.
The child indecency charge was later dismissed due to lack of evidence, but Cobos-Martinez spent a year behind bars after being convicted of assault in relation to the case. WFAA-TV reported he broke a jail employee’s jaw during a fight while the child indecency charge was still moving through the court system.
A California jury later acquitted Cobos-Martinez of carjacking, but convicted him of false imprisonment in the attack on the female motorist.
He eventually wound up in ICE custody until his release earlier this year.
