Months after Ramón Morales Reyes was falsely accused by the Department of Homeland Security of penning letters threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump, his children Ana and Antonio say that their family continues to live in fear while awaiting the outcome of their father’s deportation case. 

“My dad was framed for something that he did not do, and DHS knew exactly what they posted beforehand,” Ana Morales, 25, said at a press conference Friday at the Milwaukee office of Voces de la Frontera. “As a daughter, seeing my dad being framed for something he did not do was very heartbreaking,” she added.

Attorney Mark Thomsen said the family is seeking $5 million in damages caused by the federal government’s accusations against Morales Reyes, which the agency has yet to retract. Thomsen was joined by immigration attorney Cain Oulahan, Morales Reyes’ children, Voces de la Frontera Executive Director Christine Neumann-Oritz, and Milwaukee Turners Executive Director Emilio de Torre. 

Accused of something he didn’t do

In May 2025, Morales Reyes, then 54, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving his unoccupied vehicle on the roadside. Voces de la Frontera received a hotline call reporting the arrest. 

Born in Mexico, Morales Reyes has lived in the United States since 1986. His family described him as a hard worker and proud family man, who worked as a dishwasher.

His arrest came as the Trump administration ramped up arrests and deportations in 2025, the deadliest year in two decades for people being detained by ICE. Trump pledged to go after “the worst of the worst.” 

Morales Reyes had two encounters with law enforcement, both dating back to 1996, according to NPR. One was a hit-and-run incident in which he was arrested but not charged. The other was a disorderly conduct and property damage ticket relating to a dispute with his wife.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted a statement on her agency’s website calling Morales Reyes an “illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump.” 

DHS also released images of a letter, handwritten in English, that said: “we are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans” and stating “I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 to shoot your precious president in is head — I will see him at one of his big ralleys .” The reference to “30 yard 6”appears to be an incorrectly written reference to the high caliber rifle round .30-06.

Morales Reyes couldn’t have written the letter, however, his family, attorneys, and advocates said, since he could not speak English and did not read or write proficiently even in Spanish. 

Morales Reyes had applied for a U-visa, granted to victims of crimes, after he was  assaulted during an armed robbery in September 2023. Detectives from the Milwaukee Police Department were actively investigating whether someone was trying to frame him when ICE agents arrested him and publicized the  accusation that he was a would-be assassin. It was later determined that a man who had been arrested for assaulting Morales Reyes had written the letter in an effort to get him deported before he could testify in court.

Lasting harm

In June 2025, Morales-Reyes was released from ICE custody on bond. Yet he continues to face deportation proceedings, with a hearing expected in December in which a judge may make a decision on whether Morales Reyes can remain in the country. The family has received online harassment and threats since Morales Reyes was accused of writing the letter, Ana Morales said.

“He’s been going through depression, anxiety,” she said during the Friday press conference. “He doesn’t like going out anymore because he feels like everyone knows him due to what he was framed as. And ever since, it has taken a lot from us.” 

Ana’s brother Antonio Morales took over the mic when  his sister began to cry. “They really wanted to make this hurt us as much as possible, inflict as much pain, and they knew what they were doing intentionally,” he said of the Homeland Security arrest and accusations against his father.

“It was hard seeing your dad all over social media posted as some sort of, you know, some sort of assassin almost,” he added. “And that’s just not who my father is. Anyone who knows my father knows that isn’t him. It was just really scary seeing all those comments online, the fear that it caused my family seeing how everybody just…threatening us online over something that was just a false accusation. And I really think DHS knew that. I really think that they knew what they were doing. They wanted to do this to us. They want to do this to more immigrants, and they really want to keep terrorizing the community going forward.”

Thomsen asked members of the public to “imagine learning on social media that your father, or your grandfather, or your uncle, or your brother, or your sister was being accused of attempting to kill the president of the United States.” He added, “Imagine what that means, and then imagine that the person that is saying it is the strongest government in the world. … This was a lie, and they knew it was a lie. The lie is still up.”

Gesturing to Ana and Antonio Morales, he said, “Check it out folks, these are two young people with the courage to stand up to the biggest government on the planet, the most powerful government on the planet, and say, ‘Do the right thing America.’ If these two young folks can do it, everybody sitting at home safely can do it.”

Looking ahead

Although DHS has said in subsequent statements that Morales Reyes is no longer under investigation for threatening the president, the agency has continued to call for his deportation. Noem’s original press release accusing him of the assassination threat is still up on the government website. The Wisconsin Examiner reached out to DHS asking specifically whether the agency plans to remove the post and correct the record. The agency has not responded. 

Oulahan said that although Morales Reyes has a hearing in December, if a judge decides to deport him, he could remain in the country while his case is appealed. Thomsen said that the federal government has six months to respond to the family’s claim for compensation under the federal Tort Act, after which filing a civil lawsuit would be an option. Thomsen stressed, however, that avenues of recourse against the federal government are limited and that the second Trump administration has shown a willingness to violate or disregard court orders. 

De Torre said the federal government is “deceiving the public about everyday people.”

“They’re disrupting us emotionally, as you can see from Ana and Antonio. … It is disrupting our economy. It is disrupting our ability to attend houses of worship, go to school, and bring home food for our families. And on top of this, they then deny that they are doing this. Telling us that what we see is not real. How we feel and how we’re suffering is an illusion. And I’m sitting here today to say this is not so.”

Asked to describe some of her favorite memories of her father, Ana recalled how he would take her to the park and bike riding, one of his favorite activities. “I remember as a little kid on his days off I would always want corn, I’m obsessed with corn even to this day,” she said. Despite working second shift her father would always make time, she said. 

Antonio described his father as fond of video games. “He definitely made me a gamer,” he said. Occasionally Morales Reyes would let his son play. “I was just so amazed by these games,” he recalled, smiling. “It was really fun.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Monday weighed how it should manage the response to election administration errors made by the cities of Milwaukee and Green Bay in recent months. 

During the August and April elections this year, Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys mistakenly sent duplicate absentee ballots to some voters after the labels were printed twice. 

In Milwaukee, during the August primary, election results were delayed after officials mistakenly downloaded the wrong file, then had to return to the city’s central count location to retrieve the actual results. 

The errors in the two cities, in addition to the city of Madison misplacing nearly 200 absentee ballots during the 2024 election, triggered scrutiny of election administration in Wisconsin’s three largest cities as Republicans in the state and across the country have spent the last six years casting doubt on the security of the state’s election systems. 

While Republicans have not uncovered large-scale fraud or an effort to sway the results of any elections, the errors have given election skeptics a foothold for further criticism. 

At Monday’s meeting, commissioner Bob Spindell, the most right-wing member of the body and a frequent election critic, said that the commission needs to take action against Milwaukee because Republicans are skeptical and accused the Democrats on the committee and city election officials of conducting a “cover up” of what happened while allowing problems to “fester.” He also said he would bet $100 that the city will have a problem counting ballots during the November election. 

“I believe we are taking our responsibility extremely seriously by looking into this and what has turned into a national concern by many, at least Republicans, which make up a large portion of Wisconsin and the U.S. population,” Spindell said. 

After the mistake was made, the commission put a discussion of the error on the agenda for Monday’s meeting and agency staff wrote a draft letter to send to the city requesting an explanation of what occurred. Before the commission met or sent the letter, the city responded. 

On Monday, the commission was specifically debating if it should still send a letter to the city, and if so what it should say — ultimately voting to draft a second letter that thanks the city for its initial response and reasserts a request for the audit logs of the voting equipment. 

Mark Thomsen, a Democrat, said that the reporting of results gets delayed in other communities across the state without any problems, so the commission shouldn’t impugn Milwaukee’s election officials over this issue. 

“If it wasn’t Milwaukee, and if it wasn’t for this ongoing, I think unfair, attack on the city and county of Milwaukee, nobody would have even paid attention to an hour delay,” Thomsen said. 

In Green Bay, the city sending duplicate absentee ballots in two elections has already resulted in the resignation of Jeffreys, the city clerk. WEC Attorney Angela Sharpe said during the meeting that some outstanding questions about the issue are “unknowable” because it’s impossible to track down each duplicate ballot once it has been put in the mail. But, she said the WEC investigation into the matter has satisfactorily determined what happened and why the mistake was made. 

In the meeting, the commission was voting to determine if the staff should continue investigating or begin drafting a final determination of whether any laws were broken. 

“I think we have a good understanding of the factors that led to the April incident and the June incident, but like I said, it does seem clear, and especially since Clerk Jeffreys is no longer in the role of city clerk, that there are going to be some actions that we just can’t know, and that the city of Green Bay can’t know,” Sharpe said. “But I do think, based on my assessment, that Green Bay has provided a lot of information. I think the city has responded at least to everything that the commission wanted to know, and then they also responded to the couple of questions that I had just based on their first response. So I think we know what we can about the situation.”

Commissioner Ann Jacobs said that her main concern was that the error was repeated, but that given that Jeffreys is no longer the clerk and the city has changed its procedures — including changing where ballot mailing labels are printed — there’s nothing to gain from endlessly investigating. 

“I think our investigation part of this has concluded. I agree with Attorney Sharpe that we learned what happened. They’ve put new processes in place, which I think was our concern about it happening the second time,” Jacobs said.