Migrant ‘Squatter King’ to (Finally) Be Deported

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The last time we checked in on Leonel Moreno, the illegal migrant who became a viral social media star, he was “potentially” facing charges for illegally migrating to the country and promoting squatting as a way for other illegal migrants to maximize the amount of resources they could suck out of the system without working after coming to America. This is the same migrant squatter who told his many social media followers that “work is for slaves” and that they should grab whatever they can get their hands on with no regrets. He was also something of an expert on panhandling and maximizing the cash that could be had from sympathetic American suckers. And yet no matter how many times he was picked up and detained, he was inevitably saved by whatever lucky charm he apparently carried with him and he was not sent back to the Venezuelan prison where he belonged. With that sort of a record under his belt, we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up just yet, but an immigration judge in Ohio has now ordered Moreno to be deported at long last. Will it happen? Even the judge doesn’t sound terribly confident.

“Migrant influencer” Leonel Moreno, who went viral on TikTok for encouraging illegal border crossers to squat in US homes, was ordered deported by an immigration judge — but he likely won’t be kicked out of the country anyway because of a diplomatic row.

An Ohio-based immigration judge ordered the 27-year-old Venezuelan migrant, who also waved around wads of cash on social media and flaunted what he said were US government handouts, to be removed from the US on Sept. 9, according to Homeland Security sources.

Moreno crossed the southern border illegally into Eagle Pass, Texas, on April 23, 2022.

There is an order for Moreno’s deportation in hand, but a spat between the Biden administration and President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela led Maduro to halt all deportation flights from the United States and Mexico to Venezuela earlier this year. Getting Venezuela to cooperate with the United States on pretty much anything is nearly impossible these days. The fact (or as close as we can get to a fact) that Nicolas Madura stole yet another election and is trying to lock up his opponent isn’t helping matters because that forced the Biden administration to take action. (Just a bit of irony there, eh?) 

When asked by reporters how he keeps winding up in trouble, Moreno cried poverty and claimed to be the subject of “persecution” in both his home country and in the United States. Check out this bit of caterwauling. 

“It’s all misinformation in the media about me. They’re defaming me. They’re misrepresenting me in the news … I am a good father, a good husband, a good son, a good person, humble, respectful to people who respect me,” he added.

For the time being, Moreno is cooling his heels in the Geauga County Jail in Ohio. He’s been there for a while now, but nobody seems to be quite sure what to do with him. We can’t simply send him to a migrant shelter because those facilities don’t have guards assigned to keep people from leaving. He would never willingly stay in a shelter because “the food isn’t good enough,” particularly for someone who regularly publishes videos of himself waving around wads of $100 bills like a rapper heading for his cocaine dealer’s house between gigs onstage in the hood. 

If he is booted out of the jail (again) and he can’t be loaded on a plane for Caracas, then what else can we do with him? Letting him roam the countryside freely should be out of the question entirely. His very presence in the United States with that sort of attitude is a blatant insult to all legal citizens and migrants. This might require some creative thinking. Surely there are some countries that would like to earn favor with the United States, particularly during these fraught international conditions. I seem to recall that we dropped off quite a few people in Egypt during the war on ISIS and the fighting in Iraq. Human rights advocates raised a stink over that, but Egypt has long had a way of making problems disappear or at least go down the memory hole before very long. We still do a lot for Egypt and they would prefer to be on our side than that of Hamas or Iran. A smart administration could probably quietly set up a meeting with our Egyptian counterparts and arrange for a relaxing vacation for Moreno somewhere in the vicinity of some marvelous historical sights. (Not that he would see many of them.)

Does that sound harsh? Perhaps. But word travels quickly down at the border and the migrants have their own ways of tracking what’s happening on the grapevine. If anyone else has any better ideas, I’m all ears, but sometimes expediency needs to take precedence over the normal rules of order. This piece of work should definitely qualify as an exception to the normal rules of order.