Virginia Murder Suspect is Illegal Alien Who Had Been Released From Jail Hours Earlier
“court records indicate that since 2020, Morales-Ortez had been charged with at least seven crimes in Fairfax County”
A man arrested in connection with a deadly shooting this week in Reston, Virginia, is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. To make matters worse, he had been released from jail just hours earlier, after an ICE detainer request was ignored.
We need to start prosecuting the people who are responsible for releasing criminals who then kill.
NEW: ICE confirms that a murder suspect arrested for shooting & killing a man in Reston, VA yesterday is a Salvadoran illegal alien who had just been released from the Fairfax County, VA jail the day beforehand with ICE's detainer request ignored.
23-year-old Marvin… pic.twitter.com/TjBpO5fWsp
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) December 18, 2025
🚨Suspect in custody!🚨
Officers took the suspect into custody and recovered a firearm on scene. Detectives continue to investigate. Available updates will be posted on our blog https://t.co/PBMfNnSkey pic.twitter.com/rleSl9twhe
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) December 17, 2025
From NBC News in Washington:
Reston accused killer who set off manhunt was released from jail a day earlier
A 23-year-old Reston, Virginia, man was arraigned on a murder charge Thursday after authorities say he killed a man on Wednesday and led police on a two-hour manhunt.
Two elementary schools were placed on secure-the-building status as police urgently searched for Marvin Morales-Ortez.
He killed a man he lived with, 40-year-old Marvin Ernesto Morales, police said. No information on the relationship between the two was released other than they shared the same residence.
Morales-Ortez was released from jail the day before the shooting. According to a criminal complaint, he was charged with maliciously wounding someone who lived in the home on Sept. 12. He was taken into custody on multiple charges.
That case went before a judge on Tuesday. But the prosecutor’s office said the victim didn’t show up to court to testify against Morales-Ortez, so charges were dropped.
The judge ordered Morales-Ortez released from custody.
He has a history of mental health issues, court records say. The county’s Community Services Board issued an emergency custody order shortly after his release from jail. An ECO allows police to arrest someone who poses an immediate threat to themselves or someone else. Police can take them in and get them services.
More from WJLA News:
Illegal El Salvadoran immigrant arrested after man found shot to death in Reston home
7News has learned that a man accused of committing a homicide a day after being released from jail is in the country illegally, and has a history of prior charges.
A man died after a shooting inside a home in Reston, Va., on Wednesday, according to the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD).
From the afternoon well into the night, officers investigated at the home, which is at 12307 Fan Shell Court. After a manhunt, police arrested Marvin Morales-Ortez, 23, who they’ve named as the accused shooter.
ICE said Morales-Ortez was from El Salvador and was in the country illegally. In addition, court records indicate that since 2020, Morales-Ortez had been charged with at least seven crimes in Fairfax County.
Among those charges was a first-degree murder charge in 2021, and he spent a year and a half in jail while he awaited trial. However, it was ultimately determined he was not involved in the murder and charges were dropped — with someone else being convicted in the case, according to the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Video report here:
And, of course, the prosecutor in this case is a George Soros backed prosecutor.
The prosecutor who released the Reston, Virginia, shooting suspect, an illegal alien, was backed by George Soros.
Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano has received $627,653 from the Soros-funded Justice & Public Safety PAC. https://t.co/bu2nJMR5Fh pic.twitter.com/p71P6PlvZ1
— Americans for Public Trust (@apublictrust) December 19, 2025
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
One could make a not unreasonable assumption based on events that part of the unstated mission of sanctuary state governments is to release hostile foreign invaders who have been caught committing crimes against Americans so that they may continue to do so.
Subotai Bahadur
The solution to this problem would violate our constitutional rights. How much harm to society can we allow to happen before those “rights” are put aside and actions are taken to eliminate (make your own interpretation) the people doing this harm?
The judges and DAs?
As much harm as it takes. The entire premise of the bill of rights is that liberty is more important than safety. The founders made that decision for us — it doesn’t matter how much crime could be prevented by violating people’s fundamental rights, we are absolutely forbidden from doing so, and we must accept higher crime as the price for liberty. That applies to the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments. They all contribute to the crime rate, and yet we’re bound by them, because without them there would be no point in safety from crime, we’d be permanently unsafe from the government.
I’m not sure what you mean. It is within our constitutional rights to remove prosecutors and judges whose actions endanger Americans. It is also within our constitutional rights to deport illegals. In fact, it is our duty under the law.
And it just gets more egregious each time, it seems.
I don’t think you can blame the judge this time. Maybe you can blame the prosecutor for not being able to file without the testimony of the victim.
Of course, I wouldn’t have let him go. I would have turned him over to ICE for immediate deportation. It at least removes him from the community immediately.
And that’s the point isn’t it?
Somebody in the justice system made the conscious decision NOT to honor the ICE detainer. He needs to be held personally responsible.
I would add, “by any means necessary,” but I don’t want to infringe on Democrat trademarks.
The state made that decision, and the constitution upholds its right to do so. For the local authorities to hold him for ICE would have been a crime, and they would have deserved to be arrested for it.
Oops, sorry, I was thinking Maryland, not Virginia. Virginia is not (yet) a “sanctuary state”, but it allows its subdivisions to exercise its right, and Fairfax County has chosen to do so.
A state’s subdivisions share the state’s constitutional rights so long as it doesn’t tell them otherwise. Texas has told its subdivisions that they must cooperate with ICE. California has told its subdivisions that they must not. The constitution upholds both of these laws.
The Constitution also says that Federal law supercedes state law. Aren’t states that ignore Federal law in violation of the Constitution?
No, they’re not. There is no federal law requiring them to comply with ICE detainers, and there can’t be such a law. States and their subdivisions may not obstruct ICE, but they are not required to lift a finger to assist it. They are not required to give ICE any information, or to allow it to operate on their property without a warrant, just like any individual.
On the contrary, states have a constitutional right to refuse to assist the federal government, so Congress has no power to make laws compelling such assistance.
Congress can’t even compel the states by cutting off funding that they can’t afford to lose. It can only persuade them, by making painful but affordable cuts to funding.
Do you think this is bad? Wait till Abigail Spanberger becomes VA Gov.
Agreed, along with that racist Jay Jones.
You voted for this, Virginia, now here it comes.
Gooder and harder.
Considering Jones daughter just called for the outright murder of all whites I tend to agree with you.
When they tell us who they are, we should believe them.
Tyranny…sweet songs lull you in but automatic weapon fire leads you out.
It doesn’t lead you. You have to push for every damn foot you earn.
All these low IQ, criminal peasants from third-world hell holes have a “history of mental health ISSUES.”
Putting efforts to shield illegal alien criminals with ‘a history of mental health issues’ from detention by ICE above public safety interests seems like a bad idea.
It’s beyond a bad idea and it should be criminalized with egregious consequences. Again I state and I know you know that the first and some say only reason for government is public safety, If government is not protecting the citizens there is no reason for it.
My attempt at sarcasm failed. Should have used the tag /S.
The clear priority for some is open borders, unlimited mass population migration to the USA with the federal gov’t doing much of the funding direct or indirectly. Meanwhile blue State/blue City leadership pledge allegiance to ‘sanctuary’ and work harder to limit the effectiveness of ICE than on protecting the average US Citizen.
Your basic point about social compact is exactly correct. IMO these.’sanctuary’ jurisdictions are undermining their authority and the broader public perception of their authority aka consent of the governed. Consider the lengths most of these ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions went to during Covid Mania. The contrast in invoking their general police power to ‘protect’ the public during Covid v simply handing over wanted illegal Aliens who are already in custody to ICE is damn stark.
Crap. I saw who was posting but then again I wasn’t paying attention. I shouldn’t have needed a /sarc tag, My failure.
What is infuriating is the leftist morons want a police state to pound upon law abiding citizens whose views they hate while simultaneously wanting to enable criminal aliens half of whom are home grown and the other half who break our laws the minute they set foot in our country. I believe they do so because they are threatened by our ideas which they can’t refute but don’t feel threatened by the true criminals who actually could pose a physical danger to them. They are insane and a very real danger to all of us.
Nah, no worries. The responsibility to transmit a clear, understandable communication that the recipient/audience will immediately comprehend is in on the person sending the transmission. So its on me, not you.
I definitely agree that those fearful of losing a debate/contest of ideas seem to be far more willing to shut down any discussion, stifle any discussion or debate via censorship, deplatforming, shadow bans of those they disagree with. IMO, the answer to speech we disagree with is to counter it with good speech of well reasoned arguments to convince folks. Obviously that doesn’t apply to direct threats or IMO indirect threats which we should always take at face value, refusing to grant benefit of the doubt.
Nah, it came off as sarcasm at least to me.
Being ignorant of the criminal justice system, I am more than a bit puzzled by the account, “Morales-Ortez was released from jail the day before the shooting. According to a criminal complaint, he was charged with maliciously wounding someone who lived in the home on Sept. 12. He was taken into custody on multiple charges. That case went before a judge on Tuesday. But the prosecutor’s office said the victim didn’t show up to court to testify against Morales-Ortez, so charges were dropped.” So in the case of a murder and the murder victim does not show up to testify, do the authorities then also drop charges? I would think that the the police had sufficient evidence from the victim concerning the “maliciously wounding” that charges would still be sustained in the absence of direct testimony from the witness. I get that direct testimony from the victim would strengthen the case but I fail to see that the absence of it should result in the dropping of charges. Clearly I am missing something.
You have the right to face your accuser, supposedly. That changes when the victim is dead, so the investigation team becomes your accuser. When the victim is still alive there is no investigation team necessary because the prosecution is relying on the testimony of the accuser. Just go sit in criminal court for a few days and pay real close attn. to what’s going on and you’ll quickly see what a sham the courtroom really is.
I don’t think so. This isn’t a case of Joe Shmoe v. Marvin Fernando Morales‑Ortez, it’s Commonwealth of Virginia v. Marvin Fernando Morales‑Ortez. The state is the accuser.
The state showed up.
The state showed up, but with what evidence?
Without the victim’s testimony there was very unlikely to be sufficient evidence to sustain the charge.
Missing something?
My guess is a set up, criminal caught, put before a Leftist judge, prosecution says victim, quite possibly a Illegal or intimidated doesn’t show up, criminal walks.
Yep! Criminal walks while the innocent go to jail. Criminal goes to jail while the innocent walks. It’s a toss up. Almost a complete joke. Just go sit in there for a few days and form your own opinion. Hell, just go read about the O.J. Simpson case. Then go read about Adrian Schoolcraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
Cops with arrest quotas? But, but…! Say it isn’t so!
Without the victim’s testimony, what evidence was there that he was a criminal? He was entitled to the presumption of innocence, and without evidence proving his guilt beyond reasonable doubt there was no basis for keeping him in custody. Bear in mind that he’d already spent a year and a half in jail for literally nothing — awaiting trial for a crime he didn’t commit. So the state had already wronged him. Holding him for no reason would have just repeated that wrong.
How many Slobadorians were admitted to the country before our borders were left open and Hart-Celler turned the country into the world’s garbage pail?
We are beyond deportation with this guy. He should be executed.
Deported beyond the 12 mile limit in the Atlantic and allowed to fend for himself.
If he’s convicted. He’s been falsely accused before — how confident can we be that this time he’s guilty?
Prosecuting for what? They’re being released when there’s no legal justification for holding them. Either they’ve served their sentence, or the judge has given them bail, or as in this case there are no charges against them.
In this case, the accuser didn’t show up in court, so the charges were dropped, and the defendant was a free man. The ICE detainer was literally the only reason not to let him go, and Maryland stands on its undisputed constitutional right to forbid its employees from complying with such detainers; thus, the authorities had literally no choice but to let him go. Holding him for one second longer would have been a crime.
And those same records indicate that at least one of those charges was false.
The number of times a person has been charged is irrelevant. You can’t hold someone because he’s been falsely arrested a bunch of times, or even because he’s been rightly arrested a bunch of times, but there are no charges against him now.
Not ‘at least’.
One was false. And, given his actions, I question the nature of that ‘false’. Was it ‘false’ in the sense that he didn’t do it, or ‘false in the sense that he was just an accomplice? Or ‘false’ in the sense that some lefty judge decided it was rayciss?
At least one, We have no information whatsoever about the other six charges. They may all have been valid, or they may all have been false, or some of each; we don’t know so we can’t say.
“it was ultimately determined he was not involved in the murder”. So the charge was completely false.
When this happens, the officials that let the scumbag go should be tried as accessories.
How is George so ros still able to manipulate and destroy our country?
All he’s doing is helping candidates he prefers to persuade people to vote for them. It’s still the voters who decide, not Soros. If they vote for destructive candidates, the blame is on them.
And getting over 300,000 illegal ballots counted.
Let’s not forget that.
First of all, he had nothing to do with that.
Second, those ballots were not illegal in any significant way. They were ballots that were cast by legal voters, in a legal manner. The only flaw was that the tapes were not signed, because the board of elections had been completely negligent and had either failed to train its workers to sign them, or failed to enforce that rule effectively. It seems that no one even checked that the tapes were signed until long after the election, when it should have been checked the same night, as soon as they were received.
I’m a poll worker in NYC, and the site I work at has two highly competent coordinators (all roles in the board of elections must be filled by two people, one representing each major party), who during the close check off on everything and make sure everything adds up and is properly sealed, signed, or whatever has to be done with it. The door closes at 9:00, but no one goes home until the close is complete, which means we’re there until some time between 10:00 and 10:30. Fulton didn’t have that.
But the votes on those tapes were almost certainly valid. We just can’t know for sure, because the chain of custody was insecure.
If the suspect is convicted … he should be put to death. Anyone in the legal system that ignored the ICE request should be convicted as an accomplice and imprisoned … for a long … long time.
Again, not only did no one have any obligation to comply with the ICE request, it was actually illegal for them to do so. The county banned such compliance, as was its constitutional right. So you can’t bring charges against those who did their legal duty and released someone against whom there were no charges.