BERKELEY — Two weeks after he was granted reprieve in his ongoing efforts to fight deportation, a San Jose tattoo artist was charged in what police call a “series” of attempted car thefts.
Guillermo Medina Reyes, 31, was charged with two counts of carjacking, two counts of vehicle theft and one count of grand theft, authorities said. But after being booked he was given a mental health evaluation, and has still not been transferred to jail, according to public records and media reports.
For Reyes, it is the second time he’s been hit with a felony case in the span of a month. On July 2, he was charged with vandalism in Santa Clara County for allegedly kicking down an apartment door last May. In that incident, Reyes said he was experiencing a mental health crisis and believed someone he knew was trapped inside.
Reyes is a community activist and San Jose-based tattoo artist whose years-long efforts to fight pending deportation to Mexico have made headlines. He was brought to the U.S. when he was 6 years old. Two weeks ago, a judge barred ICE from detaining him for deportation until at least after a court hearing.
Now, Reyes faces the prospect of prison as well as eventual deportation. Berkeley police say that on July 27, they identified him as the suspect in a crime spree that started when a man punched a passenger window on a car on the 1700 block of San Pablo Avenue and tried to open the door.
Other callers reported similar incidents in the area, police said. Reyes was detained, booked for a “medical evaluation,” then formally charged by the Alameda County District Attorney on Wednesday.
Reyes has been fighting deportation for years, well before the Trump Administration ramped up anti-immigration enforcement. As a teen, after serving a youth incarceration sentence for attempted murder, Reyes was placed in immigration detention for 15 months. In 2023, an immigration judge ordered his release after determining he wasn’t a threat or flight risk and that ICE could not prove that they could promptly deport him.
After the May vandalism arrest, ICE attempted to detain him once again. He was released, again, but equipped with a GPS monitoring device on his ankle.
The judge who granted Reyes reprieve also set a deadline of July 29 for attorneys on both sides of the case to submit a timeline for the next proceedings in in federal court. That document was filed on top, but sealed by court order, records show.
Jia H. Jung contributed reporting