Recap from Part 1: In March 2024, Jeremy Rene Reyes, then 20 years old, was arrested on charges of battery, assault, and the rape of a 12-year-old seventh-grader at San Francisco Everett Middle School (EMS). At the time of his hiring in 2023, Reyes was on probation for six felony charges in Contra Costa County, yet was employed as campus security and teaching support with the Beacon program for EMS by Mission Graduates.
Why was Jeremy Reyes Martinez, with felony priors, hired to supervise students?
Reyes entered the United States from Guatemala as a minor and is an asylum applicant alongside his mother. At age 13, he was placed in the California foster care system, becoming a ward of the court and later a nonminor dependent under AB 12, which extends benefits such as stipends, housing support, and child-protective social-worker services until age 21. Because he holds Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Reyes is also represented by a “dependency attorney,” a counsel appointed to advocate for children who cannot reunify with a parent due to abuse, abandonment, or neglect. In addition, he receives free legal assistance and an immigration attorney through the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), an immigrant rights organization. These layers of representation meant Reyes had access to a full suite of private and publicly funded support services and lawyers when he was charged with six felony counts in Contra Costa County.
Court records show Reyes’s team of social workers and attorneys, together with Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton’s charging decisions, secured a probationary sentence with no felony convictions, an outcome that preserved his eligibility for asylum under federal law. Since 2022, the felony charges and subsequent dismissals have been publicly accessible through the Contra Costa Superior Court’s online portal, where the case history remains available for public review.
Reyes was serving his one-year probation term, which began on Feb. 9, 2023, when Mission Graduates hired him to work in the Beacon Program at EMS, providing before and after-school supervision (see below). In addition to assisting with Beacon activities, Reyes served as a campus security guard responsible for student safety. EMS leadership introduced the victim’s guardians to the Beacon Program, and she was subsequently enrolled. Reyes’s role in the program placed him in daily contact with EMS students, including those considered especially vulnerable, such as English learners and students from under-resourced communities who rely on these extended programs for support.
After Reyes’s arrest, both the principal and assistant principal of EMS were placed on leave. Court filings allege that school administrators and staff were aware of Reyes’s inappropriate interactions and grooming behavior but failed to intervene to protect students. Meanwhile, Reyes’s legal advocates have continued to argue that pretrial incarceration would jeopardize his housing benefits and negatively affect his asylum application under federal immigration rules (see below).
Under U.S. immigration law, asylum eligibility is severely restricted for applicants convicted of an “aggravated felony,” a category defined broadly in Immigration and Nationality Act § 101(a)(43) [8 United States Code § 1101(a)(43)] to include numerous violent offenses, such as assault with a deadly weapon and sexual abuse of a minor.
We also discovered in our investigation that in the March 25, 2024 court transcripts (see below), Reyes’s San Francisco deputy public defender, Semuteh Freeman, misled the court. Freeman argued that Reyes should be considered for probation and non-detention because he was co-parenting a 4½-year-old child when in fact, that child was no more than 24 months old at the time of the hearing.
Judges exercise sentencing and custody discretion under California Penal Code §1170 and §1170.05, and Family Code §§3011 and 3040, allowing them to weigh a defendant’s caregiving role and the child’s need for continuity and stability — considerations that often carry greater practical force when the child is school-aged rather than a newborn.
Witnesses and even Reyes’s own Facebook page (pictured above) validate that Reyes’s child is less than 2 years old.
Statewide shifts to restorative justice and immigration status over public safety
Reyes’s plea deal reflects California’s statewide shift toward restorative justice and immigration considerations over public safety and accountability, driven by a series of reforms:
– Proposition 47 (2014) reclassified certain nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.
– Penal Code § 1016.3 (2015) requires prosecutors to avoid adverse immigration consequences in plea deals and mandates immigration advice from public defenders.
– Proposition 57 (2016) reclassified via courts many serious felonies (e.g., rape by intoxication, assault with deadly weapon, rape of disabled) as nonviolent for reduced parole and sentence.
– SB 54 (2017) established sanctuary policies limiting local cooperation with federal immigration forces.
– SB 823 (2020) transferred juvenile justice to county-level rehabilitative programs.
– AB 702 (2023) expanded restorative justice and diversion funding.
– Attorney General Rob Bonta’s January 2025 guidance on Penal Code § 1016.3 continues to direct prosecutors to prioritize avoidance of deportation in plea decisions for noncitizens, creating preferential treatment for immigration status over uniform enforcement.
These policies, culminating in Bonta’s ongoing directive, tilt the scales toward rehabilitation and immigration protection while sidelining consistent accountability for serious crimes.
Trial delayed two years
Reyes’s trial has been delayed over two dozen times in nearly two years by Judge Bruce E. Chan. Stop Crime Action labels it a defense tactic to double time-served credit on strong evidence cases. San Francisco Superior Court under Public Defender Manohar Raju has some of the state’s slowest clearance rates, with judges routinely granting procedural delays that reduce sentences. Many judges, including Chan, have public defender backgrounds, 38 percent of San Francisco judges now do, up 11 percentage points since 2019. Raju’s office is criticized for rejecting felony cases to seek budget increases despite declining caseloads.
Sex abuse transparency and litigation looms big in 2026
Beginning in 2026, SB 848 will require California schools to disclose sexual misconduct investigations and add perpetrators like Reyes to a statewide hiring vetting database. Some districts, including Fairfield Suisun Unified, have preemptively deleted older records to limit liability. Internal emails directed staff to purge archived Google Mail “to reduce the cost and effort required to respond to public records requests and to limit the legal exposure of our district.” Such deletions can heighten litigation risk, as destroying potentially relevant documents may backfire in civil claims.