26 Apr 2025

ICE Arrests Former Judge and His Wife

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the home of former Dona Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano and his wife Nancy Cano, and arrested them for allegedly harboring a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

ICE claimed to be acting on a tip that “an illegal alien from Venezuela and a suspected member of a criminal gang, was residing with other illegal aliens in the United States” and possessed a firearm.

On 28 February two search warrants were used to search the Canos’ home. Four guns and three immigrants were seized.

In March federal officials accused the Canos of sheltering undocumented Venezuelan immigrant Cristhian Ortega-Lopez on their property. Judge Cano resigned but pushed back against the federal narrative. His resignation letter included:

Let me be as crystal clear as possible. The very first time I ever heard that the boys could possibly have any association with Tren de Aragua was when I was informed of that by [the] agents on the day of the raid.

Their papers stated in the upper right-hand corner, ‘This Person is Not Subject to Removal.’ They each had a specific court date regarding their asylum hearing.

This indicated they were in the country legitimately and their paperwork was in order.

Court filings say that in 2023 Ortego-Lopez installed a glass door for Nancy Cano. He did more odd jobs for her after that. In April 2024, after he was evicted from his apartment she let him stay in a small house on their property.

While staying there, he had access to guns. He posted to social media some photos of himself holding them.

From his social media account and the accounts of the other immigrants staying at the property, federal agents claim they saw signs of affiliation with Tren de Aragua. “These indicators included tattoos, clothing apparel and displaying hand gestures.” ICE counts tattoos as four of the eight points needed in its scoring system to declare a person is linked with Tren de Aragua. ICE has recently been known to declare innocuous tattoos are gang tattoos and have recorded clothing with the logo of a sports team as gang clothing.

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