When we last checked in on purported Tren de Aragua gang member Jose Vasquez Hernandez, he was on top of the world. Despite being in the country illegally and being caught red-handed selling guns to an undercover ATF agent, we reported on June 30 that a Cook County judge handed him a sentence requiring him to serve absolutely zero prison time. What a country!
Well, folks, we can now report that Jose found himself unexpectedly run over by the wheels of American justice on Wednesday morning when federal agents swooped in, arrested him, and booked him for a complimentary flight back to Venezuela. Vasquez Hernandez, 31, is being deported.
“It would have been nice if the state or county would have held him for us,” a federal law enforcement agent said shortly after the arrest, noting that neither the county nor the state gave the feds a heads-up that Vasquez Hernandez was going to walk free — though he was in the country illegally and had sold firearms to federal agents.
“He seems like the sort of person the government would like to have removed from the community,” the frustrated agent vented on Wednesday. “Why make it difficult to remove someone everyone agrees should not be in our neighborhoods?”
Instead of handing Vasquez Hernandez over to federal authorities, the state released him immediately after processing him on the gun sale sentence, records show. He did not even have to spend a single night in prison, thanks to credits he earned by sitting in the Cook County Jail and the state’s generous, automatic 50% sentence reduction.
The case began in the spring of 2025 when an informant working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began communicating with a man to arrange a gun sale in Chicago, prosecutors alleged. The investigation was part of a wider operation targeting suspected members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, officials said at the time.
Prosecutors said the informant arranged for a gun deal near 16th Street and Homan Avenue on July 10, 2025, and Vasquez Hernandez showed up, identifying himself as the other gun dealer’s “associate.”
He allegedly told the undercover agents and informant in Spanish, “I’m the other supplier, the one who gets these things.”
He then led them to a garage, retrieved a red bag, and repeated, “I’m the one who gets this,” before producing a 5.56-caliber rifle and a 7.62-caliber rifle that prosecutors said he offered to sell for $3,800. The transaction was allegedly captured on video and audio.
Officials also alleged Vasquez Hernandez discussed selling “Tusi,” a synthetic drug mixture sometimes called “pink cocaine,” and said he could supply it. However, no drug transaction was completed, and he was never charged with any narcotics offenses.
Despite the involvement of federal investigators, Vasquez Hernandez was charged only in state court with delivering a firearm without a license and aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon. He pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful firearm delivery in exchange for an 18-month prison sentence from Judge Thomas Byrne. That sentence was fully satisfied through Illinois’ day-for-day sentencing credit and the time he had already spent in custody.
When Cook County Judge Luciano Panici Jr. ordered Vasquez Hernandez detained last summer, he said detention was necessary in part because Vasquez Hernandez was a “member of a transnational criminal organization.” Prosecutors also said Vasquez Hernandez was a Venezuelan citizen who was “not a legal resident of the United States.” Before long, he won’t be an illegal resident of the United States, either.
