Donald Trump once stood in Grand Rapids and called Ruby Garcia's killer America's problem.
Her confessed killer just answered him from behind bars in Michigan.
Brandon Ortiz-Vite says the president owes him for one very specific reason.
Convicted Killer Claims Race and Immigration Status Made Him a Target
Ortiz-Vite pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for gunning down 25-year-old Ruby Garcia in March 2024.
He shot her multiple times during an argument in her own car.
Then he dumped her body along US-131 in Grand Rapids and drove off in her vehicle.
He eventually turned himself in at a church and confessed.
A Michigan court handed him 39 to 102 years behind bars at the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Kincheloe.
That should have been the end of the story.
Instead, Ortiz-Vite has filed a handwritten, pro se lawsuit in federal court naming President Trump and White House spokesman Steven Cheung as defendants.
He wants $75.5 million in punitive damages, stress counseling, his court costs paid, a formal public apology, and – almost unbelievably – "naturalization to this beautiful country."
Ortiz-Vite claims Trump destroyed his life by using his mugshot in 2024 campaign ads alongside four other men accused of murder, rape, and drug trafficking.
He says he watched those ads air on television while sitting with fellow inmates.
He wrote that his race, his case, and his immigration status mattered more than who he actually was as a person.
He calls the experience humiliating and says it belongs to him and his family as a lasting shame.
What he leaves out is who put him in that category in the first place.
Ortiz-Vite burned through his DACA protections with arrests for driving without a license, breaking and entering, and drunk driving, and immigration officials deported him in 2020.
He snuck back in under Biden and killed Ruby Garcia within four years.
Trump highlighted her killing during that same Grand Rapids stop, telling the crowd "under Crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state."
That rally is now the entire basis of a $75 million lawsuit.
Legal Experts See a Case Headed Nowhere Fast
Grand Rapids attorney and former federal prosecutor Matthew Borgula reviewed the complaint and did not mince words.
"Based on my experience, I do not think this lawsuit is going anywhere," he said.
Borgula noted presidential immunity generally shields official acts, though campaign trail statements sit in murkier legal territory.
Even so, he pointed out the obvious problem for Ortiz-Vite: everything Trump said about him was true.
A booking photo is a public document that any campaign is free to use.
And no law bars a candidate from talking about a killer on the trail.
Being accurately described as a murderer after pleading guilty to murder is not a constitutional injury, no matter how embarrassing it feels in the prison yard.
Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan national convicted of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, was sentenced to life without parole in November 2024 – and he is still fighting that conviction, now arguing he was too mentally impaired to stand trial.
Riley's death is also why Congress passed the Laken Riley Act, a law forcing ICE to detain illegal immigrants charged with violent crimes or theft.
Ortiz-Vite is running the same play – a preventable killing turns into a national flashpoint, and years later the killer is back in court trying to relitigate his own notoriety.
Only this time, the target isn't a jury.
It's the President of the United States, sued from a prison cell for the crime of telling the truth.
Ruby Garcia Never Got to Bill Trump for 75 Million
For years, the same activists who lecture Americans about "dehumanizing" rhetoric never once explained why Ortiz-Vite's dignity outranks Ruby Garcia's life.
She doesn't get to file a lawsuit for $75 million.
She doesn't get naturalization papers or a public apology.
She's dead, dumped on a highway shoulder by a man this country had already deported once.
Every dollar Ortiz-Vite demands and every year he spends filing motions from Chippewa Correctional Facility is a reminder of how badly the system failed Ruby Garcia before it ever failed him.
Trump didn't manufacture that failure – he just refused to stay quiet about it on a stage in Grand Rapids.
Federal clerks now have to log this complaint, docket it, and route it to a judge, all on the taxpayer dime, because a convicted murderer didn't like his mugshot in a campaign ad.
That's the actual cost of "access to the courts" for a man who forfeited his to Ruby Garcia the night he pulled the trigger.
If a judge wants to send a message about wasting the court's time, this handwritten complaint is exactly the vehicle to do it.
Ortiz-Vite says he "stood tall" the night he confessed to killing his girlfriend.
He should try standing tall enough to accept the sentence he already pleaded guilty to, instead of billing American taxpayers $75 million for the privilege of being called what he is.
Sources:
- Fox News, "Illegal immigrant who murdered Michigan woman sues Trump, demands $75M, public apology, US citizenship," Fox News, July 20, 2026.
- Ward Clark, "Outrage: Illegal Alien and Convicted Murderer Suing Trump for $75M & Citizenship," RedState, July 20, 2026.
- Daily Caller, "Ruby Garcia's Illegal Alien Killer Sues Trump, Demands Millions And U.S. Citizenship," The Daily Caller, July 20, 2026.
- Jim Hoft, "You Can't Make This Up: Illegal Alien Convicted for Killing Ruby Garcia, SUES Trump," The Gateway Pundit, July 2026.
- Stepheny Price, "Illegal immigrant convicted in Laken Riley murder pushes for new trial as judge delays ruling," Fox News, January 30, 2026.
- Fox News, "Trump spotlights 'Biden's Border Bloodbath' during stop in crucial battleground state he lost in 2020," Fox News, 2024.
