Rep. Greg Steube<\/a> wants Congress to remove the judge from the bench. WINK News is working to learn why the judge believed he had to release that man.<\/p>\nJudge John Steele said ICE didn’t show it could actually deport Miakel Guerra Morales so it couldn’t keep holding him in custody. Steube says releasing a man convicted of hijacking a plane puts people in danger.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors say Morales, a Cuban national, helped hijack a commuter plane in Cuba in 2003. He forced the pilot to fly to Key West in what investigators said was an attempt to reach the United States.<\/p>\n
He was later convicted of aircraft piracy and sentenced to 22 years in federal prison. When he finished that sentence, ICE arrested him while trying to deport him.<\/p>\n
The court said ICE wanted to deport him to Mexico but didn’t show Mexico had agreed to accept him or that there was any real plan in place to remove him. Steele ordered his release from ICE custody.<\/p>\n
Steube accuses the Fort Myers judge of abusing his authority. The Department of Homeland Security calls the decision an example of an “activist judge.”<\/p>\n
WINK News has reached out to Judge Steele for comment. WINK News is also working to learn where Morales is now.<\/p>\n
For this judge to actually be impeached, a majority of the House would have to vote to impeach him. Then two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to remove him from the bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 A Fort Myers federal judge faces articles of impeachment for ordering ICE to release…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,3837,325,115],"class_list":["post-342789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-collaborator_gen_stories","tag-lee","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}