An Obama-appointed judge is facing mounting backlash for praising an illegal immigrant who raped a woman with cerebral palsy — and now he could be walking free sooner than expected.
Honduran Edys Renan Membreño Díaz, 30, who entered the United States illegally seven times, pulled a woman with cerebral palsy and cognitive delays into the laundry room of her apartment building before sodomizing and raping her, according to The Detroit News.
U.S. District Judge Judith Levy spared the illegal immigrant an additional two years in prison, calling him an “ambassador for living up to our immigration restrictions,” the outlet reported.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the judge’s decision showed “unspeakable depravity,” calling it “truly wicked.”
Membreño Díaz was sentenced three years ago and could now walk free as soon as July 2028, according to The Detroit News. Federal prosecutors, however, requested two additional years on his sentence for his immigration crimes.
But Levy didn’t budge, deciding that the five months he spent in federal custody were enough. She also lauded Membreño Díaz as a model immigrant.
“I usually have almost no hope that a prosecution of this nature will discourage other people but in your unique case, you have expressed that you will be an ambassador for living up to our immigration restrictions and that you will communicate your experience to people back in Honduras and discourage them from coming here without documentation,” Levy said during his sentencing in August.
Prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision in October, requesting a resentencing.
“It is rare for the government to appeal a sentence as substantively unreasonable, but doing so is warranted here,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Meghan Sweeney Bean wrote, according to The Detroit News.
“Oddly, the district court spun (Díaz’s) repeated illegal entries in his favor, commending his family devotion and willingness to perform work that it claimed Americans find undesirable,” the prosecutor added. “And it gave virtually no weight to his violent sex crimes.”
Unspeakable Depravity.
Edys Renan Membreño Díaz, a criminal illegal from Honduras who illegally entered our country 7 times, was convicted of raping and sodomizing a woman who has cerebral palsy and cognitive delays. He attacked her and dragged her into her apartment building’s… pic.twitter.com/wrsMcP2jDE
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) December 13, 2025
The illegal immigrant pleaded guilty to three sex crimes and was sentenced to 6-15 years in a Michigan prison in October 2022.
“I was drunk, and I apologize to everybody, to all the American citizens. I wish to go back to my country and not to come back to the United States and to advise other people to not come here illegally and, if they do, to come here legally so they don’t pay the consequences that I am facing being incarcerated,” Díaz told the judge in August, according to The Detroit News.
Levy praised the illegal immigrant for fessing up.
“I agree that that’s a horrible crime. … You’ve taken responsibility for that, expressed remorse for that and you are serving a lengthy state sentence as punishment for that conduct,” Levy said.
“So I commend you for supporting your family, for expressing your devotion to them and for working here in the United States in jobs that Americans apparently do not want to work in and certainly not for the wages that were undoubtedly abusive of your work for them,” the judge said.
“…I see … somebody who is stepping forward to take responsibility and to gain insight into what led you to commit that crime of sexual assault and this one of illegal reentry,” Levy said.
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