A 36-year-old illegal immigrant already facing burglary charges walked out of a Contra Costa County courtroom on a judge's order and, prosecutors say, fatally stabbed a 68-year-old retiree outside the man's own home the very next day.
Todd Stewart had lived on his quiet street in Martinez, California, for roughly 40 years. He was a retiree in a small city just east of San Francisco, the kind of place where a man might expect to walk out to his garage without fearing for his life. Prosecutors say Marcos Iriarte-Valdez shattered that expectation when he allegedly tried to burglarize Stewart's home, encountered Stewart in the garage, attempted to flee, and then turned and stabbed him to death.
Iriarte-Valdez had been arrested on a Tuesday for violating the conditions of home detention tied to earlier burglary charges. A judge released him on his own recognizance the following day, Wednesday. By Thursday, Fox News reported, Stewart was dead. Police arrested Iriarte-Valdez on Friday evening using automated license plate recognition technology and tips from the community.
The Department of Homeland Security has since demanded that California Governor Gavin Newsom hand the suspect over to federal authorities, and the case has reignited the long-running clash between the state's sanctuary policies and federal immigration enforcement.
Iriarte-Valdez is a Venezuelan national who also holds Spanish citizenship. DHS says he was legally admitted to the United States during the George W. Bush administration, placing his arrival no later than early 2009, but was subsequently classified as an illegal immigrant. The specific legal mechanism behind that reclassification was not detailed in available reporting.
By April of this year, Contra Costa County prosecutors had already charged him in connection with burglaries at occupied residences. One of those victims, an unnamed homeowner whose 83-year-old wife saw Iriarte-Valdez's reflection in her home and screamed, spoke to KTVU, the local Fox affiliate in San Francisco.
That homeowner expressed a kind of resigned bewilderment at the judge's decision to let Iriarte-Valdez walk free. He told the station:
"The judge uses his discretion or her discretion. I don't know who the judge was, so, you know, who am I to argue?"
He should not have had to argue. A suspect charged with breaking into homes where elderly residents were present was released back onto those same streets. And now a man is dead.
The judge who ordered the release has not been publicly identified. Fox News Digital reported that the court could not be reached for comment. Neither the Martinez Police Department nor District Attorney Diana Becton's office responded to requests for comment.
Contra Costa County prosecutors have since loaded Iriarte-Valdez with a sweeping set of charges: murder, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, three counts of burglary, receiving known stolen property, trespassing, entering a non-commercial dwelling, loitering, and violation of a court-ordered protective order. The spousal-injury charge was not explained in connection to the Stewart killing, and it remains unclear whether it stems from a separate incident.
On top of those charges, prosecutors added three enhancements. The first is a special circumstance allegation, that the murder occurred during or immediately after a burglary. The second charges personal use of a deadly weapon, specifically a knife. The third targets the fact that Iriarte-Valdez allegedly committed the killing while released on his own recognizance from prior charges.
That third enhancement is worth pausing on. It exists precisely because the justice system recognizes the heightened danger of a defendant who commits a violent crime while already free on a pending case. The judge who released Iriarte-Valdez created the conditions that enhancement was designed to address.
Iriarte-Valdez pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. He is being held without bail. His next court date is listed as Tuesday, September 1. The New York Post reported that the suspect's home detention monitoring equipment had not even been placed on him until the day after Stewart was killed, meaning that between his Wednesday release and Thursday's stabbing, there was effectively no supervision at all.
DHS placed an immigration detainer on Iriarte-Valdez on September 23, 2025. The department then publicly called on Governor Newsom to turn the suspect over to federal authorities. In a social media post, DHS wrote:
"CA Governor [Gavin Newsom] must not release this murderer from jail and turn him over to us so we can REMOVE him from our nation."
The word "murderer" in that post is DHS's framing. Iriarte-Valdez has been charged with murder but has not been convicted. Still, the department's broader argument is straightforward: California's refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement puts people at risk.
A DHS spokesperson laid it out in a statement to Fox News Digital:
"The safest way to arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our streets is by lodging arrest detainers. Because sanctuary cities refuse to work with ICE law enforcement, criminal illegal aliens are released from jails into American communities to perpetuate more crimes. Seven of the top 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE."
DHS did not provide the methodology behind that statistic, but the underlying point, that cooperation between local jails and federal immigration authorities reduces the chance of exactly this kind of outcome, is difficult to argue with when a retiree is dead one day after a judge opened the door.
The department also issued a broader statement: "Sanctuary politicians must stop putting politics above public safety. This type of insanity leads to more crimes and more innocent victims."
Governor Newsom's office did not concede an inch. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, Newsom's chief deputy director of communications, told Fox News Digital:
"This individual should face justice for his alleged crime. California takes public safety seriously, and nothing in California law prevents federal authorities from enforcing federal immigration law. The federal government has billions of dollars and substantial resources to enforce federal law, they do their job instead of blaming California for ICE's enforcement failures."
The response is a familiar one from Sacramento. California officials routinely argue that federal immigration enforcement is Washington's responsibility, not the state's. But that framing sidesteps the specific question at the center of this case: Why was a man already charged with burglarizing occupied homes, a man under a home detention order he had just violated, released on his own recognizance by a county judge?
That decision was not made by ICE. It was not made by DHS. It was made by a judge in a California courtroom, operating under California's legal framework, in a county where the district attorney's office has not publicly explained why it did not oppose the release or seek bail.
Todd Stewart was 68 years old. He had spent four decades on his street in Martinez. He was not involved in immigration policy or criminal justice reform. He was a retiree who walked out to his garage and encountered a man who, prosecutors say, should never have been free to be there.
Iriarte-Valdez had been charged with burglary. He had violated his home detention. He had been brought before a judge who had every reason to keep him locked up, and who chose not to. The monitoring equipment that was supposed to track him after his release had not even been activated before Stewart was killed.
Several questions remain unanswered. Did the county receive the DHS immigration detainer before the judge's release order, and if so, was it factored into the decision? On what legal basis did the judge conclude that releasing Iriarte-Valdez on his own recognizance was appropriate for a defendant who had just violated the terms of his existing release? And why has no one in the county's justice system offered a public explanation?
Fox News Digital reported that the court, the police department, and the district attorney's office all failed to respond to requests for comment. The judge has not been identified. The silence from local officials stands in sharp contrast to the volume of the tragedy.
When the system releases a man it already knows is dangerous, and that man kills someone the next day, the system does not get to shrug and point at Washington. Someone in that courthouse made a choice. Todd Stewart is the one who lived, and died, with the consequences.
