Illegal immigrant accused of biting toddler's face at San Antonio park had prior felony arrest the Biden administration chose to ignore

A 24-year-old Indian national already arrested once for felony assault in Texas allegedly attacked a mother and her three-year-old daughter at a San Antonio park on April 18, an assault that federal officials now say never should have been possible. Atharva Vyas remains in the Bexar County Detention Center, where ICE has lodged a detainer requesting custody after his criminal proceedings end.

The case turns on a single decision made years earlier. The Department of Homeland Security told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration "determined the crime was not egregious enough to warrant visa revocation and decided to take no enforcement action against Vyas" after his first arrest. That earlier arrest came on the University of Texas campus in late 2023, roughly three months after Vyas entered the country on a student visa. University police contacted ICE at the time. Nothing happened.

Now a little girl named Amelia Perez has lost two teeth. Her mother, 27-year-old Gabriella Perez, described the scene as something "out of a zombie movie."

What San Antonio police say happened at Espada Park

San Antonio police said Vyas pulled Gabriella Perez's hair and punched her, causing her to drop her daughter. He then allegedly turned on the child and bit her face. Witnesses at Espada Park restrained Vyas until officers arrived.

Authorities charged him with injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury, assault causing bodily injury, and illegal entry. He was booked into the Bexar County Detention Center.

The GoFundMe page Gabriella Perez created after the attack said Amelia needed constant care, comfort, and reassurance. Two baby teeth gone. A three-year-old who was walking in a park with her mother on a spring afternoon.

A prior felony arrest, and a federal shrug

DHS laid out the timeline plainly. Vyas first entered the United States in August 2023 on a student visa. Three months later, he was arrested on the University of Texas campus on charges of felony assault. Campus police did the right thing and contacted ICE.

What followed was bureaucratic indifference. The Biden administration reviewed the case, decided the felony assault charge did not rise to the level of visa revocation, and released Vyas without enforcement action. He remained in the country. The New York Post reported that Vyas's F-1 student visa was not revoked until April 2025, under the Trump administration, well after the San Antonio attack had already taken place.

That gap, from late 2023 to April 2025, is the gap in which a mother and her toddler were allegedly assaulted at a public park. Every month Vyas spent free in the United States after his first arrest was a month the federal government chose to allow.

The broader fight over whether local jurisdictions should be compelled to cooperate with ICE detainers has played out in Congress, where Rep. Jim Jordan has pushed legislation to force sanctuary cities to work with federal immigration authorities. Cases like this one illustrate why that debate matters beyond Capitol Hill.

DHS officials point the finger squarely at the prior administration

Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis did not mince words. She called the park attack "completely preventable" and placed blame on the decision to leave Vyas free after his first arrest.

Bis told Fox News Digital:

"This criminal [illegal alien] brutally bit this child and caused her to lose two teeth. This barbaric assault against this woman and her 3-year-old in a park was completely preventable."

She continued:

"The Biden administration never should have released this animal following his arrest for assault. We are working with our partners in Texas to ensure this criminal illegal alien never roams free in American communities again."

DHS did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for additional comment beyond Bis's statements. The department's own account of the timeline, however, speaks for itself: a foreign national on a student visa was arrested for felony assault, the federal government was notified, and the federal government chose to do nothing.

The enforcement landscape under the current administration

The Trump administration has moved to tighten detention and removal policies across the board. The Fifth Circuit recently upheld the administration's detention-without-bond policy in a ruling that strengthens ICE's hand in holding removable aliens through their proceedings.

ICE's detainer in the Vyas case requests that Bexar County transfer him to federal custody once his criminal case concludes. Whether that detainer will be honored depends on local cooperation, a persistent friction point in immigration enforcement. Some jurisdictions have refused to honor ICE detainers, and courts have sometimes intervened on the side of release, as happened when a federal judge ordered an MS-13 member with a history of rape and robbery freed from ICE custody.

The charges Vyas faces in San Antonio are serious. Injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury is a felony under Texas law. The additional charge of illegal entry suggests that his immigration status had deteriorated beyond the original student visa, though the Step 1 package does not specify the evidentiary basis for that charge, and the disposition of his earlier University of Texas felony assault case remains unclear from available reporting.

A mother and daughter pay the price for federal inaction

Gabriella Perez did not ask for a policy debate. She took her daughter to a park. What she got, in her own words, looked like something "out of a zombie movie." The GoFundMe page she set up describes a child who now needs constant reassurance, a three-year-old trying to make sense of an attack no adult should have to endure.

The open questions in this case are uncomfortable ones. What happened to the felony assault charges from the University of Texas arrest? Were they dropped, plea-bargained, or still pending when Vyas allegedly struck again? Why did the Biden administration conclude that a felony assault arrest on a college campus was not "egregious enough" to revoke a student visa? What standard was applied, and who applied it?

None of those questions have public answers yet. Fox News Digital's request for additional comment from DHS went unanswered beyond the statements already provided.

The political debate over immigration enforcement often unfolds in abstractions, deportation numbers, visa categories, policy memos. Meanwhile, some in Congress have pushed to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants while dismissing the feasibility of removal. Cases like this one strip the abstraction away.

A man was arrested for felony assault. The federal government was told. The federal government decided it wasn't bad enough to act. Months later, a toddler lost two teeth in a park.

The people who made that call will never have to explain it to Amelia Perez. That is the real failure, not just of policy, but of the most basic obligation government owes the people it governs: keeping them safe from threats it already knew about.