YEARS OF NONENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW LED TO DALLAS BEHEADING. There is still more to learn about the horrific case of Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, the illegal immigrant accused of beheading a hotel manager in Dallas. You can read the terrible details of what happened here. And now, a bit more about the suspect’s history, collected from knowledgeable sources:
Cobos-Martinez came to the United States from Cuba. Since the 1959 revolution, the U.S. has had special immigration programs that apply specifically to Cubans. One allows a Cuban national to come to the U.S., be “paroled” into the country — that is, given permission to stay here legally — and have one year in which to apply for permanent lawful status.
Cobos-Martinez was paroled into the U.S. on April 2, 2016. But he did not apply for permanent residency in the following year. One reason he might not have done so is that in February 2017, less than a year after his arrival, police say Cobos-Martinez stole a car in Miami-Dade County, Florida, resulting in his being charged with felony grand theft auto.
Now, at that point, given that Cobos-Martinez was still in the country lawfully on parole, that the parole was granted entirely at the discretion of the U.S. government, and that he was charged with felony grand theft auto, one might expect the government to revoke the parole and send Cobos-Martinez back to Cuba. That did not happen. Instead, Cobos-Martinez stayed in the U.S. His one-year period passed on April 2, 2017, and after that, he was in the U.S. illegally.
From there, Cobos-Martinez was off to the races, criminally speaking. According to Dallas television station NBCDFW, “In June 2017, in South Lake Tahoe, California, a police report details a carjacking in which Cobos-Martinez, while naked, tried to force himself into a woman’s car while pulling her hair and clothes and sitting on her lap. Cobos-Martinez told police he had about 20 beers and smoked a joint of marijuana before the carjacking.” He was charged with carjacking and with false imprisonment, which in this case meant stealing a car with someone in it.
Now, at that point, one might ask: Since Cobos-Martinez was in the U.S. illegally, and since he was charged with felony auto theft in Florida and carjacking and false imprisonment in California, why wasn’t he deported, if not immediately, then when the cases were adjudicated? And why should he have been freed in the interim, given that he was in the U.S. illegally and represented a clear flight risk? And if he was not convicted in the cases, why was he not deported anyway at the end of the process, because he was in the country illegally? After all, after April 2, 2017, Cobos-Martinez could have been deported at any time, even if he had not committed other crimes.
None of that happened, and Cobos-Martinez moved on. According to NBCDFW, in 2018, he was charged in Texas with indecency with a child after he allegedly assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Later, the indecency charge was dismissed, but according to NBCDFW, Cobos-Martinez spent about a year in jail on an assault charge stemming from the incident.
Meanwhile, it appears the California carjacking charges just sort of hung around. But in 2023, they caught up with Cobos-Martinez, and he was arrested in January 2023 as a fugitive from justice. In August 2023, the carjacking charge was dropped, but Cobos-Martinez was convicted of false imprisonment.
On the immigration side of all this, after years of lawbreaking, Cobos-Martinez received a final order of deportation. He was detained by immigration authorities in October 2024. But of course, he would have to be deported to Cuba. Then, Cuba refused to accept him — after all, he was a violent criminal, and who wants to accept a violent criminal?
It does not appear that the Biden administration tried very hard to send Cobos-Martinez to Cuba. And if an illegal immigrant is ordered removed, but authorities determine there is no hope of actually removing him in the foreseeable future, he is then released. So on Jan. 13 of this year, with the Biden administration on the way out and an administration expected to be much tougher on illegal immigration about to take power, authorities released Cobos-Martinez.
The best opportunity to deport Cobos-Martinez was in January 2025, because he had a final order of removal — due process! — and he was in custody. But the Biden administration just let him go.
Eight months later, Cobos-Martinez was at the Dallas hotel, reportedly wielding a machete and hacking off the head of manager Chandra Nagamallaiah, as Nagamallaiah’s horrified family looked on. According to police, Cobos-Martinez then kicked Nagamallaiah’s head into the parking lot, “like a soccer ball,” before tossing it in a dumpster. Police arrested Cobos-Martinez, covered in Nagamallaiah’s blood and still holding the machete, a short distance away. Cobos-Martinez is now, finally, behind bars. He will be tried for murder in Texas. Whatever happens, if he ever leaves the custody of the state of Texas, he will be immediately handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported.
Of course, none of this had to happen. At some point in the Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump administrations, somebody could have decided to enforce immigration law. Of course, the advocates and interest groups who favor nearly open borders would have protested. But the country would have been safer and the law upheld. The only hope left from this case is that authorities will learn from it and not repeat their mistakes in the future.
