A 27-year-old illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic walked out of ICE custody in Rhode Island last Tuesday after a federal judge set his bail at just $500, even though he is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice and a homicide arrest warrant issued by Dominican authorities in January 2023. The judge, it turns out, was never told any of that. And now court filings reveal that ICE itself instructed the federal prosecutor handling the case not to disclose it.
The case of Bryan Rafael Gomez has ignited a collision between the Department of Homeland Security and a Biden-era federal judge in Rhode Island, with each side pointing at the other over a failure that put a man wanted for murder back on American streets. The facts that have emerged so far suggest the failure was not accidental, and that the people who should have prevented it chose not to.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose ordered Gomez released from the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, after finding that ICE had detained him under a legal authority meant for migrants apprehended at the border. Gomez, however, had been arrested by local police in Worcester, Massachusetts, on April 4 on assault and battery charges, not picked up at the border. DuBose ruled his continued detention amounted to "continuous unlawful detention" and ordered him released pending a bond hearing before an immigration judge, the Daily Mail reported.
The legal question DuBose addressed, whether ICE used the correct detention statute, is a narrow procedural matter. But the information she was given to make her decision was, by the government's own later admission, fatally incomplete.
DuBose said in a Thursday night statement that the government's response to the habeas petition "failed to include any facts relative to this petitioner, including facts relevant to an assessment of dangerousness, criminal history or risk of flight." In other words, the judge was asked to rule on whether a man should remain locked up, and the government handed her a filing that said essentially nothing about who he was or what he had done.
Court filings presented to DuBose told a sympathetic story: Gomez had fled the Dominican Republic after his brother was shot in 2022, "fearing that he would be killed." By 2025, he had married a U.S. citizen and was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on April 16 for an asylum hearing. What those filings did not mention was that Dominican authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Gomez on January 24, 2023, for homicide, or that Interpol had placed a Red Notice on him.
The pattern of Biden-appointed judges drawing backlash in divisive immigration rulings has become a recurring flashpoint. But this case adds a wrinkle: the judge herself appears to have been misled by the government's own lawyers.
On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan admitted in court filings, obtained by the Rhode Island Current, that DuBose was never told Gomez was a wanted man. More than that, Bolan revealed that ICE had instructed him not to share the information with the court.
Bolan offered an apology:
"I sincerely apologize to Judge DuBose, personally, and to the entire Court for the consequences of this lack of disclosure."
That disclosure, or rather, the deliberate lack of one, sits at the center of a rapidly escalating confrontation. DuBose responded late Thursday night with a second order setting a Monday show-cause hearing and requiring the attorneys involved to explain why the court was not informed. She warned they could face contempt of court.
Her language was direct:
"Failing to provide this court with relevant and material facts threatens public safety and erodes trust in the rule of law."
It is worth pausing on what happened here. A federal law enforcement agency, ICE, apparently told a federal prosecutor not to inform a federal judge that the detainee before her was wanted internationally for homicide. Then, after the judge made a decision based on the incomplete record, DHS publicly attacked her for it.
Acting DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis wasted no time condemning DuBose after Gomez's release. In a statement tied to an April 16 press release, Bis framed the situation as judicial activism:
"Bryan Rafael Gomez is a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with an international warrant for homicide. An activist judge appointed by Joe Biden released this wanted murderer back into American communities."
Bis added that the case was "yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart President Trump's mandate from the American people to remove criminal illegal aliens from our communities." She pledged that "under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to be in our country."
Fox News reported that DHS described Gomez as holding a deportation order, an international homicide warrant, and an Interpol Red Notice, details the agency possessed but, by the prosecutor's own admission, withheld from the court.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island Charles Calenda pushed back on the media coverage that followed. He pointed out that press accounts "erroneously state that Judge DuBose made the decision to release him with knowledge that authorities in the Dominican Republic had issued an arrest warrant in connection with a homicide in that country."
Calenda was blunt: "As our recent filing in this matter makes clear, Judge DuBose did not have knowledge at the time of her ruling that Gomez was wanted by authorities in the Dominican Republic."
The question of judicial overreach in politically charged cases has become a recurring source of friction. A recent D.C. Circuit ruling rebuking a federal judge over a contempt probe related to Trump deportation flights illustrated how quickly these disputes escalate. But in the Gomez case, the judge's critics face an uncomfortable fact: the government's own filings now confirm she was kept in the dark.
DuBose was appointed by former President Biden in January 2024 and sworn in on January 3, 2025. During her nomination hearings, Sen. John Kennedy questioned her about a 2000 news article in which she was quoted saying, "I was in my Marxist phase," as the Boston Herald reported.
That background has made her an easy target for conservative critics. And DHS's framing, "activist judge appointed by Joe Biden", clearly aimed to capitalize on it. The broader pattern of Biden-appointed judges issuing controversial rulings has fueled ongoing scrutiny of the confirmation process itself.
But the "activist judge" label sits uneasily next to the prosecutor's admission that ICE told him to withhold material facts from the court. A judge can only rule on what she is given. DuBose was given a filing that said nothing about dangerousness, criminal history, or flight risk, and she ruled accordingly.
Gomez is now free. He had been held at the Wyatt Detention Facility for several weeks following his April 4 arrest. His asylum hearing was scheduled for April 16. The New York Post reported that DHS described him as holding a deportation order in addition to the Interpol Red Notice and the Dominican homicide warrant.
The Monday show-cause hearing ordered by DuBose will force the attorneys involved to explain why the court was not told that the man before it was wanted for murder. Contempt of court remains on the table.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts, where Gomez was arrested, is advancing legislation that would restrict ICE operations within the state, including bans on courthouse arrests and provisions allowing the state to prosecute federal agents. That legislative push adds another layer to the jurisdictional tangle that allowed this case to unfold the way it did.
The Daily Mail reached out to both DuBose and Gomez's lawyer, Melanie Shapiro, for comment. The broader question of what authority Biden-appointed judges actually hold in immigration enforcement cases continues to generate legal and political conflict.
There is plenty to criticize in this case. A man wanted for murder in his home country is now free in the United States on $500 bail. That is an indefensible outcome.
But the people responsible for that outcome are not limited to the judge who signed the order. ICE had the information. ICE chose to suppress it. The prosecutor followed ICE's instruction and filed a response so empty that the judge herself later said it contained no facts "relevant to an assessment of dangerousness, criminal history or risk of flight."
Then, after the predictable result, DHS attacked the judge publicly, the same judge its own agency had deliberately kept uninformed.
If the goal is to keep dangerous illegal immigrants off American streets, the system has to work honestly. Judges cannot protect public safety with information the government refuses to give them. And agencies that withhold material facts from courts do not get to blame the courts for the consequences.
Accountability runs in every direction, or it doesn't run at all.
