Local authorities in Texas have arrested a Cuban immigrant in the case of a gruesome murder of a motel employee, the latest high-profile criminal case the Trump administration is using to double down on its mass deportation efforts.

Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, 37, admitted to killing Chandra Nagamallaiah with a machete at the Downtown Suites motel in Dallas on the morning of Sept. 10, according to a police affidavit the Miami Herald obtained. Nagamallaiah was cleaning a room with another worker when he told Cobos-Martinez that he could not use a broken washing machine.

Cobos-Martinez got angry that Nagamallaiah was using a witness to translate and attacked him, according to the document. The killing took place in front of Nagamallaiah’s wife and child, who tried to get Cobos-Martinez to stop, but he pushed them away.

“The suspect then continued to cut the complainant multiple times until his head was removed from his body. The suspect then kicked the complainant’s head twice into the parking lot and proceeded to pick it up and carry it to the dumpster and put it inside,” the affidavit said.

The Trump administration has zeroed in on immigrant perpetrators of violent crimes, like Cobos-Martinez, to defend its iron-fisted approach to immigration enforcement — including deportations to third-country prisons or nations in turmoil.

“Rest assured, the time for being soft on these illegal immigrant criminals is OVER under my watch!” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social about the grisly killing in Dallas.

The Department of Homeland Security slammed the Biden administration for releasing Cobos-Martinez from an ICE detention center in January. Even though he had a deportation order, Cuba would not take Cobos-Martinez back, the agency said.

“This is exactly why we are removing criminal illegal aliens to third countries… If you come to our country illegally, you could end up in Eswatini, Uganda, South Sudan, or CECOT,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who said the murder was “completely preventable” had Cobos-Martinez not been freed. CECOT is a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent Venezuelans accused of being gang members earlier this year.

Cuba consistently rejects deportees who have committed violent offenses. To handle those cases, the Trump administration has brokered deals with third-party countries willing to receive them. That includes the deportation of two Cubans with criminal records to South Sudan, the northeastern African country in the midst of a bloody civil war. The administration has faced litigation for the removals, with critics saying they are human rights violations that fly in the face of international law.

Other high-profile murders the Trump administration has highlighted include the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley at the hands of a Venezuelan immigrant. In January, Trump signed a bill into law that requires Homeland Security to detain undocumented immigrants who are arrested for several crimes, including theft or burglary.

Research from Syracuse University shows that most immigrants the Trump administration currently has in immigration detention don’t have criminal convictions. The Cato Institute found that of the 204,297 people Immigration and Customs Enforcement booked from October to June, 65% had no convictions and 93% had no convictions for violent offenses.

The Dallas Police Department detained Cobos-Martinez as he was fleeing, covered in blood and with the machete in hand, according to the affidavit. The District Attorney’s office has not yet filed formal charges, and told the Herald it does not comment on pending investigations. Cobos-Martinez is currently being held in the Dallas County Jail, public records show, on a murder charge.

Cobos-Martinez’s rap sheet in the U.S. includes child sex abuse, grand theft of a motor vehicle, false imprisonment and carjacking, according to Homeland Security.

Some residents in the Cuban province of Holguín where he once lived welcomed his detention, accusing him of committing a killing in his hometown of Mayarí before fleeing to the United States.

The Herald could not verify the accusations because criminal records are not public in Cuba. Efforts to reach the two women making those claims on Facebook were unsuccessful. The mother of Cobos-Martinez, Odalys Martinez Rodriguez, denied the accusations in an interview with Marti Noticias, the U.S. government station and website.

She said her son immigrated to the United States in 2016 and since then has faced mental health issues. Martinez Rodriguez said he served five years in prison and lived in a park, homeless, for the following two years. She expressed remorse of not having alerted the motel staff of his mental illness, and said she unsuccessfully tried to get him a Cuban passport so he could return to the island and receive medical treatment.

Neither a relative of Cobos-Martinez who is residing in the U.S. nor the Cuban embassy in Washington responded to a request for comment.

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