U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi disclosed alarming new details about a former Democratic New Mexico judge accused of extreme measures to protect a known member of a violent Venezuelan gang in the U.S. On Friday, Bondi revealed that Judge Joel Cano, who resigned and was permanently barred from any judicial role in New Mexico, deliberately destroyed evidence to shield a suspected Tren de Aragua gang member living in his family’s home.
“Judge Cano, soon to be former Judge Cano, got, his charges were just unsealed. He’s charged with obstruction. He admitted post-Miranda. He took one of the TDA member’s cell phones, himself, took it, beat it with a hammer, destroyed it, and then walked the pieces to a city dumpster to dispose of it to protect him,” Bondi told Fox News. Nancy Cano, Joel Cano’s wife, has also been charged with evidence tampering. Bondi said the TDA member, identified as Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, not only had a violent criminal record but was sending gruesome images of decapitated victims via text.
Bondi added, “He had on his cell phone pictures of two decapitated victims… and he was sending them out and whoever he was sending them to was sending back, ‘Hey, you need to be careful. You shouldn’t be texting these photos out.’” The alleged conduct of the now former judge and his wife has provoked widespread outrage and renewed fears about the Tren de Aragua gang’s growing reach in the U.S. following mass illegal migration from Venezuela during the Biden-Harris regime.
Bondi also disclosed that the couple supplied Ortega-Lopez with assault rifles—reportedly belonging to their daughter, April Cano—which he and other suspected TDA members used, with a suppressor, at a local shooting range. “This is the last person that we want in our country… nor will we ever tolerate a judge or anyone else harboring them,” Bondi explained.
Ortega-Lopez’s background is as troubling as the charges against him. He was arrested on February 28 during a Homeland Security raid at a property owned by Nancy Cano, which authorities say served as a base for him and other undocumented immigrants. Court filings show Ortega-Lopez admitted to entering the U.S. illegally in December 2023. After he was evicted from his apartment, Nancy Cano allegedly invited him to live in the “casita” behind her and husband Joel Cano’s after he Ortega-Lopez performed contract work installing a glass door for the couple.
Federal agents reportedly seized four firearms from the residence, and social media posts indicated that April Cano had permitted Ortega-Lopez to handle and shoot her weapons. Cano abruptly resigned his position in March without publicly acknowledging the brewing scandal. “All the best to every one of you,” he wrote in a farewell email to colleagues. “I wish all of you a happy retirement once you are ready yourself.”
President Donald Trump during his first weeks in office designated the Venezuela-based gang, along with El Salvador’s MS-13 gang, as foreign terrorist organizations. His administration has been attempting to utilize the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport said gang bangers back to their home countries or to a high security prison in El Salvador, but he’s been mostly thwarted by — you guessed it — federal judges appointed by Democrats.
