An illegal alien who took to social media to encourage other illegal aliens to squat in abandoned houses has been deported back to Venezuela.
Venezuelan national Leonel Moreno went viral on TikTok last year when he showed off a stack of dollar bills, boasted about handouts from the federal government, and encouraged other illegal aliens to squat in uninhabited houses in the United States.
“I didn’t cross the Rio Grande to work like a slave,” he said in one video posted to TikTok. Now Moreno has been sent back to his home country of Venezuela.
Moreno crossed the southern border and into Eagle Pass, Texas, under the Biden administration on April 23, 2022. He was released into the interior of the country and failed to appear for check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), leading to his arrest in Columbus, Ohio, in March 2024.
The 27-year-old Venezuelan national was ordered to be deported from the United States on September 9th, 2024, but Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had stopped accepting deportation flights into the country earlier that year in retaliation to the reimposition of economic sanctions against the country. Venezuela began accepting deportation flights from the United States after President Donald Trump took office earlier this year.
Moreno caused a disruption on his deportation flight back to his home country and had to be sectioned off in his own area of the plane with extra security, though it is unclear what exactly he did to start the disturbance. Diosdado Cabell, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, said that Moreno was “welcome” back to the country.
The deportation of Moreno comes as the Trump administration is locked in a legal battle over the expedited removal of other Venezuelan nationals connected to the violent gang and foreign terror organization Tren de Aragua.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to expedite the deportations of Tren de Aragua members, but the move has been halted by a left-wing, Obama-appointed federal judge. That injunction was recently upheld by a federal judge who donated to Democratic candidates and volunteered for the Obama campaign.
