Demetric Scott is facing four serious criminal charges in Milwaukee County for creating a fake letter that threatened the life of former President Donald Trump. Prosecutors say Scott wrote the letter and tried to pin the blame on Ramon Morales-Reyes, an undocumented immigrant, in an effort to stop Morales-Reyes from testifying against him in a separate assault case.
The handwritten letter was sent to Wisconsin’s attorney general, Milwaukee police, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It claimed responsibility for threatening to kill Trump and expressed anger over Trump’s deportation policies, including violent and graphic threats. The false threat got a lot of attention in the news. Per ABC News, It was even mentioned by the White House and supporters of the former president, including Kristi Noem, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time.
According to The Guardian, Noem publicly thanked ICE officers for arresting Morales-Reyes, who was taken into custody on May 22, 2024, just one day after ICE received the letter. However, the story quickly fell apart. One of Morales-Reyes’ children told an immigrant rights group that their father could not read or write in Spanish or English, meaning he could not have written the letter, which means the administration was wrong.
ICE arrested the wrong man
Investigators later compared handwriting samples and confirmed that the writing in the threatening letter did not match Morales-Reyes’. The threat was also found to be not credible. The administration has to flip flop again. The investigation showed that Scott, who was already charged with armed robbery and aggravated battery against Morales-Reyes from a September 2023 attack involving a box cutter, was the one who wrote the fake letter.
Court records say that while Scott was waiting for trial, phone calls he made were intercepted, and in those calls, he talked about sending letters and a plan to get someone detained by ICE to stop his own trial. Scott reportedly admitted to police that he wrote the letters. His goal, he said, was to get Morales-Reyes out of the area so he could not testify against him.
Scott’s charges include felony witness intimidation, identity theft, and two counts of bail jumping. He is currently being held in Milwaukee County Jail. His lawyer, Robert Hampton III, has not yet made any public statements about the case.
Morales-Reyes, who works as a dishwasher and lives in Milwaukee with his wife and three children, is still being held by ICE in Juneau, Wisconsin. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is a special visa for undocumented immigrants who are victims of serious crimes. His lawyers, Kime Abduli (who filed the U visa application) and Cain Oulahan (his deportation defense attorney), are trying to get him released and find ways for him to stay in the United States with his family, including his three children, who are U.S. citizens.
Published: Jun 3, 2025 10:51 am