New Trump U.S. attorney in LA touts immigration case filed under Biden
Bill Essayli’s first post on X under his new U.S. Department of Justice account attracted widespread praise.
“Thank you Bill for filing these charges. You are so appreciated for this action in standing up for these families and sending a message to criminal illegal immigrants,” one account wrote.
“God Bless you for this,” another said.
One account took a partisan tone, writing, “Democrats will be ready to protest and call him ‘California Man.’”
Essayli, who began April 2 as the interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, didn’t tell his supporters that the charge they were celebrating was filed 2 1/2 years ago, when President Joe Biden was in charge and Essayli wasn’t working for the DOJ.
Several news organizations cited Essalyi’s announcement on Wednesday when falsely reporting that an immigration charge against a man who killed two teenagers in a drunken crash after twice being deported is new or about to be filed.
Essayli didn’t claim the charge was new in his X post, but he said “my office has filed,” which many apparently took to mean he was in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office when the case was filed.
Essalyi’s announcement quoted a post from Fox News reporter Bill Melugin about Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano, who’s to be released from California state prison in July after serving 3 1/2 years in prison for killing Anya Varfolomeev and Nikolay Osokin, both 19, on Interstate 405 in Seal Beach in November 2021. He’d been serving a 10-year sentence for two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter.
“If the State of California will not seek the full measure of justice against this individual, the @TheJusticeDept will,” Essayli wrote.
X verified the account, @USAttyEssayli, as Essayli’s official government account later that day.
Essayli shared another post on his personal X account, @billessayli, from Melugin that reported Essalyi’s office “is charging this illegal alien with felony re-entry.”
Ciaran McEvoy, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, told me Essayli is “unavailable” for an interview.
The immigration charge against Ortega-Anguiano does not appear to have been filed to counter any early release from his 10-year state prison sentence. Melugin said Varfolomeev’s and Osokin’s family members learned of Ortega-Anguiano’s upcoming release on Easter Sunday; a federal grand jury indicted Ortega-Anguiano in November 2022, six months after he was booked into state prison.
But the case connects to the deadly crash by citing the apparent day of Ortega-Anguiano’s arrest, Nov. 26, 2021, as the day he was found in the country illegally. The indictment says “at least one” of his “alleged deportations” occurred after he was convicted in 2005 of felony grand theft and unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle, and of false imprisonment by violence/deceit in 2014.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen E. Scott in February ordered Ortega-Anguiano to be transported from the California Medical Facility in Vacaville to the federal courthouse in Santa Ana for arraignment on March 10. According to a March 10 minute order, “Defendant was not transported, and Arraignment was not held,” but the case remains active before U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb in Santa Ana.
Ortega-Anguiano, 43, remains in state custody at the California Medical Center, according to state records.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will “coordinate with ICE—as they have w/ 10,000+ inmates—to transfer him before release.”
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