A 24-year-old illegal immigrant from India allegedly charged at a mother and her 3-year-old daughter in a San Antonio park on April 18, biting the child's face, ripping out two of her front teeth, and leaving her with deep scratches and bite wounds, an assault the Department of Homeland Security now calls "completely preventable."
Atharva Vyas had already been arrested for felony assault on a University of Texas campus roughly three months after entering the country on a student visa in August 2023. The college contacted ICE. But federal officials under President Joe Biden determined the crime was not "egregious" enough to warrant revoking his visa, the New York Post reported. Vyas stayed in the country.
In April 2025, the Trump administration revoked Vyas's F-1 visa based on that same assault arrest. But by the time ICE lodged a detainer request with San Antonio police on April 18, the damage had already been done, in a park, in broad daylight, to a family that went out fishing.
Gabriella Perez, 27, told the New York Post she had driven with her daughter Amelia, Amelia's father Xavier Estrada, 27, and grandfather Richard Ariaza from their home in LaCoste to Espada Park in San Antonio. Around 2 p.m., Perez said, she and Amelia stepped outside a restroom when a man charged toward them.
Breitbart reported that police say Vyas came out of a wooded area before attacking the pair. He allegedly grabbed Perez's hair, punched her in the jaw, and tried to gouge her eyes. Then he turned on the child.
Perez described lowering her daughter to the ground and fighting the attacker. She told the Post that Vyas pinned the 3-year-old, jammed his thumbs into her eyes, and bit her face and mouth, knocking out two front teeth in the process.
Perez told the Post:
"That brute was ravaging my baby!"
She said she screamed for help. Two men nearby pulled out guns. Officers arrived and found Vyas drifting in and out of consciousness. Authorities said he had been under the influence of "wax," a concentrated cannabis product that one dose equates to roughly 15, 20 joints. EMS transported the child and her family to Christus Children's Hospital.
Perez described the scene at the emergency room in terms no parent should ever have to use:
"In the emergency room, the adults were all going crazy while Amelia was suffering shock. She sat eerie calm, like a statue, while the nurses and doctors worked on her poor face. She didn't make a peep, even though she was in a great deal of pain. It hadn't hit her yet, what happened."
DHS told the Post that Vyas first entered the United States from India in August 2023 on a student visa. Three months later, he was arrested on a University of Texas campus for felony assault. The college contacted ICE.
That should have been the end of the story. A foreign national on a student visa, arrested for a violent felony, flagged to federal immigration authorities, the system had every piece of information it needed to remove him. Instead, Biden-era officials concluded the crime was not "egregious" enough to justify revoking his visa.
The case echoes a grim pattern. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom pardoned an illegal immigrant convicted of attempted murder, blocking his removal from the country entirely. Different mechanism, same result: a violent offender stays.
Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis did not mince words about the failure. She told the Post:
"This barbaric assault against this woman and her 3-year-old child in a park was completely preventable. The Biden administration NEVER should have released this animal following his arrest for assault."
The Trump administration revoked Vyas's F-1 visa in April 2025, citing the earlier assault arrest. On the same day as the park attack, ICE lodged a detainer request with San Antonio police, asking local officers to turn Vyas over after he faces the American justice system.
Vyas was jailed in the Bexar County Detention Center and charged with injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury, assault causing bodily injury, and illegal entry from a foreign nation, court records show. The charges reflect both the violence of the alleged attack and his immigration status at the time.
A DHS spokesman told the Post that "DHS law enforcement is protecting American communities every day from another senseless tragedy like this taking place in another town, to another family."
Several questions remain unanswered. No court has identified whether Vyas has legal representation or has made any public statement. The exact date of his earlier University of Texas arrest and which campus it occurred on have not been specified. It is unclear what medical treatment Amelia received beyond emergency care at Christus Children's Hospital.
The broader debate over immigration enforcement and public safety continues to intensify across the country. In Virginia, a federal Title IX probe targeted Fairfax County schools after an illegal immigrant was charged with assaulting a dozen girls. In each case, the question is the same: why was this person still here?
Gabriella Perez told the Post her daughter has been transformed by the attack. The 3-year-old who went fishing on a Saturday afternoon now lives in fear.
"She's terrified to sleep. She's lashing out, angry. She doesn't understand evil like this f***ing man. She'll never be the same again."
Perez said the family has asked for prayers and is focusing on healing and recovery. She offered a blunt warning to other parents:
"Even though you try to protect your children, this is a dangerous world with dangerous people."
That warning lands differently when the danger was supposed to have been handled by the federal government, and wasn't. The system identified Vyas. The college flagged him to ICE. The prior arrest was on the books. Every checkpoint existed. Every one was ignored or dismissed.
Cases like these are not isolated. In California, a district attorney demanded that Newsom "stop the madness" after an illegal immigrant convicted of child rape got another shot at early release. The details differ, but the institutional failure is the same: officials who had the authority to act chose not to, and someone vulnerable paid the price.
DHS noted that victims of illegal immigrant crime may contact the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office at 1-855-488-6425 for support.
The political argument over immigration enforcement often plays out in abstractions, policy papers, budget lines, legal frameworks. Meanwhile, families like the Perezes navigate something far more concrete. Across the country, angel moms have condemned efforts to use taxpayer dollars to fund legal defense for illegal immigrants, arguing that the system's priorities are inverted.
Amelia Perez is three years old. She lost two teeth, gained scars across her face, and now cannot sleep through the night. The man charged with doing that to her had already been arrested for a violent felony on American soil, and the federal government decided it wasn't bad enough to act on.
That's not a policy debate. That's a failure with a name, an age, and a face full of bite marks.
