07/23/2026
BREAKING🚨 Trump called him a "terrorist" who tried to choke a female ICE agent to death. Then two phone videos surfaced — and prosecutors admitted the choking NEVER happened.
His name is Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco. He's 31, a Venezuelan asylum seeker who fled the Maduro regime, was paroled into the U.S. in 2024, got a work permit, and delivered food and worked at a Walmart while he waited for his immigration court date.
When federal agents grabbed him near his home in Bellevue, Nebraska last summer, DHS branded him a "criminal illegal alien" and a "known Tren de Aragua terrorist," and said he slammed one agent's head into the ground and tried to choke her to death. The then-Deputy Attorney General called him a "vicious Tren de Aragua gang member." The Attorney General personally announced a charge of attempted murder. A Fox News article listed him among the "worst of the worst."
Two strangers were filming. Their videos showed him resisting and pushing against the agents as they tried to subdue him — but not attacking either one. One of those bystanders testified in court.
Prosecutors then admitted he never choked the female officer, calling it a "misperception" by the agent who wrote the affidavit that got him arrested. The attempted murder charge was dropped. So were the material-support-to-Tren-de-Aragua and assault charges.
The chief federal judge did not let it slide. "What happened here was at best a misrepresentation, I'm not going to use the word lie," he said. "To refer to him as a terrorist, an attempted murderer … is just not borne out by the evidence, and is troubling." He added: "We have to be able to trust law enforcement. In this case, in this very situation, I have some doubts."
In the end, the terrorism and attempted-murder charges vanished. He pleaded guilty to a single count of resisting arrest and was sentenced to 14 months, most of it already served.
His lawyer put it plainly: "If no one had recorded it, we'd be going to trial."
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