MIAMI— A Dominican politician arrested in Miami on cocaine trafficking charges will remain locked up before trial, a federal magistrate judge ruled Friday.
Miguel Andres Gutierrez Diaz, a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic, agreed to be detained rather than fight a request by prosecutors to keep him behind bars. They said the 58-year-old is a flight risk and danger to the community.
Gutierrez Diaz's defense attorney, Dennis Urbano, said his client would address the detention issue at a later date.
It was unclear why the Dominican congressman, who flew to Miami Monday to attend a son's graduation, did not want to seek a bond from the judge and proceed with the detention hearing. But he might have wanted to avoid generating any further publicity about his cocaine trafficking indictment, which accuses him and three others of being members of an international drug ring that operated in the Dominican Republic, Colombia and the United States from 2014 to 2017.
On Friday, Magistrate Judge John J. O'Sullivan called out certain news media in the Dominican Republic for illegally recording Gutierrez Diaz's first appearance in federal court Tuesday after his arrest. O'Sullivan said audio and video recordings of court proceedings are strictly prohibited and that he would consider issuing sanctions.
The defendant's attorney, Urbano, told the judge that Gutierrez Diaz "is a target of just about everybody in the Dominican press."
The indictment charges Miguel Andres Gutierrez Diaz, Miguel Emilio Gutierrez Diaz, and brothers Endy De Jesus Nunez Marmol and Danny Nunez Marmol with conspiring to distribute cocaine, knowing that it would be imported into the United States. It is not clear from the court record if the two Gutierrez Diaz defendants are related.
All four defendants are also charged with conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute. cocaine. The indictment was unsealed Tuesday, so Gutierrez Diaz had no idea he had been charged by the grand jury when he arrived at Miami International Airport Monday night.
Gutierrez, who faces up to life in prison if convicted, is being held at the Miami Federal Detention Center following his arrest by agents Monday night at MIA.
According to Dominican news accounts, Gutierrez Diaz entered politics in 2018, the year after the alleged drug-trafficking conspiracy ended.
Campaign videos available on Facebook indicate that Gutierrez Diaz is a member of the Dominican Republic's Modern Revolutionary Party, or PRM, which is described as a liberal/progressive party. The country's president, Luis Abinader, is also a member of the same party.
Gutierrez Diaz was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house in the Dominican Republic's bicameral legislature.
