Wisconsin man gets 16½ years in prison for forging threats against Trump in a deportation scheme

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A judge on Friday sentenced to 16½ years in prison a Wisconsin man who forged threats against President Donald Trump as part of a scheme to get the victim in a robbery case against him deported.

A Milwaukee County jury in January convicted 52-year-old Demetric DeShawn Scott of felony identity theft, witness intimidation, bail jumping and reckless endangerment. Judge Kristy Yang sentenced him to a year and six months behind bars on the identity theft count, five years on the intimidation count and 10 years on the endangerment count. She sentenced him to 882 days already served on the bail jumping charge.

According to court documents, Mexican immigrant Ramon Morales Reyes was riding his bike in Milwaukee in September 2023 when Scott approached him. He kicked Morales Reyes off the bike, stabbed him with a box cutter and then rode away on the bike. Scott was out on bail in a separate burglary case when the incident happened. Yang dismissed that case Friday, online court records show.

Scott was arrested hours after the stabbing. While he was in jail, Scott wrote multiple letters posing as Morales Reyes to state and federal officials threatening to kill Trump at a rally. Federal immigration authorities took Morales Reyes into custody in May after he dropped his daughter off at school.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasted his photo on social media, along with an excerpt of a letter he purportedly wrote in English promising to shoot Trump at a rally. The White House and Trump supporters played up his arrest as a major success in the administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Investigators determined that Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letters since he doesn’t speak English well, can’t write in the language and the handwriting in the letters didn’t match his.

Meanwhile, Scott was making calls from jail in which he talked about letters that needed to be mailed and a plan to get U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to pick someone up so his trial could get dismissed. He admitted to police that he wrote the letters.

Scott has served as his own attorney since December. He maintained his innocence as sheriff’s deputies escorted him out of the courtroom following the sentencing proceedings.

“I had never stolen a bike from anybody, and so I did what I did because he was trying to get a visa and get, become a citizen,” he told WDJT-TV as the deputies ushered him into an elevator. Asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “No, I don’t.”

The Noem news release with Morales Reyes’ photo touting his arrest is still posted on the DHS website but now includes a disclaimer stating that he’s no longer under investigation for threatening Trump but remains in ICE custody pending deportation. The release says he entered the U.S. illegally nine times between 1998 and 2005 and has a criminal record that includes arrests for felony hit and run, property damage and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier.

Morales Reyes was released on $7,500 bond in June. His deportation defense attorney, Cain Oulahan, said in January that he was currently residing with his family in Milwaukee and has applied for a U-visa, a document that allows crime victims and their family members to remain in the U.S.

Oulahan declined to comment Friday on Scott’s sentencing, but said that the U-visa process can take up to eight years. His attorneys plan to seek an order simply canceling his deportation, Oulahan said.

Morales Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1980s. He worked as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, is married and has three children who are U.S. citizens, according to his attorneys. A search of online court records didn’t show any state or federal criminal cases in Wisconsin involving Morales Reyes as a defendant.