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Kristi Noem said a Mexican immigrant wrote a letter saying that he wanted to assassinate the president. Another man has now been charged with setting him up.
June 3, 2025, 6:43 p.m. ET
The allegation was chilling. An undocumented immigrant, the Department of Homeland Security said last week, had threatened in a letter to kill the president and then “self deport myself back to Mexico.”
“Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a news release that included photos of the immigrant and of the letter, handwritten in blue ink.
Not long after the announcement, the government’s story began to look shaky. Lawyers for the Mexican man, Ramon Morales Reyes, held a news conference proclaiming his innocence. And as detectives in Wisconsin, where Mr. Morales Reyes lived, began looking deeper, they came to believe he had been framed.
By this week, Milwaukee County prosecutors had filed identity theft and witness intimidation charges against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin resident. They said that man, Demetric D. Scott, had written several threatening letters that included Mr. Morales Reyes’s name in the return address. Prosecutors said it was an attempt to catch the attention of the Trump administration and weaponize the threat of deportation against Mr. Morales Reyes, who was scheduled to testify against Mr. Scott at a robbery trial next month.
On one level, the plan described by Wisconsin prosecutors worked. Top Trump administration officials took notice, and Mr. Morales Reyes, who worked as a dishwasher, was jailed. Even with Mr. Scott now facing charges, Mr. Morales Reyes remains in custody, awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge and facing the possibility of deportation. Federal officials said Mr. Morales Reyes had a history of entering the country illegally and an arrest record.
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance on deportation and immigration, claiming a mandate from voters on the issue. But advocates for immigrants warned that the administration’s approach had contributed to an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.
