January 6th Felon Hopes To Be Reunited With Girl He Served Prison Time for Trafficking

     Buckle up when I say that this is one of the most disturbing January 6th cases I have ever seen, even though the defendant in this case has not been charged with any acts of violence or property destruction. I've already written about Michael Marroquin here. He spent over an hour inside the Capitol, shouted, "Keep moving," when insurrectionists came upon a police line, and made it to the hallway outside the House of Representatives where Ashli Babbitt was shot. While there, he took a now-viral photo of an officer with his firearm pointed at Marroquin. Marroquin shouted that the officer was a "traitor" and dared the police to arrest him. 

     Marroquin has a disturbing past. In the article published soon after his January 6th arrest, I described his arrest for human trafficking in Bolivia. In 1989, Marroquin was diagnosed with lupus nephritis and given six months to live. He has gone on to live 35 years, and this seeming divine intervention led him to start a Catholic charity called Project Angels of Hope in 1997, which did mission work in Bolivia. His work was featured in a number of Catholic news sources and local media in Round Rock and Austin, where the charity and its directors were based. In 2007, Marroquin was accused of irrational behavior and sexual harassment toward members of the group as well as financial mismanagement, and prominent Catholic figures in Texas cut their support for the organization that spring. That summer, he was arrested and charged with sexually abusing two 15-year-old girls and illegally adopting a seven-year-old girl he and his wife shared. 

     When I published the article last year, I hit a dead end. A lot has happened since last year. I was given a link to a case law database with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In April 2008, he was found guilty of two counts of statutory rape and one count of human trafficking and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In July 2009, an appeals court nullified the lower court sentence because of delays in the trial. In November 2010, a higher court denied Marroquin's motion to dismiss the case because of the delays in his trial process. The Supreme Court of Bolivia established significant precedent in the country when they ruled that the delays should result in sanctions for those responsible, not the nullification of a verdict and sentence, and that Marroquin had failed to demonstrate with specificity any injury he had suffered as a result of that delay. Marroquin's conviction and sentence were upheld. Considering he is not still in prison, it seems likely he was expelled from the country after serving three years of his sentence. 

     His wife, Virginia, seems to have stuck by him early on in the proceedings, but he lists himself as single on his Facebook profile, meaning the two are separated. Upon being released from prison, the Port Arthur native returned to Texas, settling in Nederland and opening a resale shop in Port Neches called Peddler's Paradise. From his business, Marroquin gave an interview on his arrest. He claimed that he and the other insurrectionists were actually protecting the Capitol. "Patriots made sure that Antifa stopped doing the damage," he said, reading a prepared statement at the advice of an attorney. He called what happened a set-up, saying, "the police had opened and invited us into the Capitol." 

     In spite of this claim, he pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges in February 2024. His case is on hold pending a Supreme Court ruling on the felony obstruction charge he faces. My advice to the government is this: I'd argue his shouting at and moving past police lines constitutes felony civil disorder. He should be charged with that to ensure he at least faces a likely felony conviction and prison sentence if the obstruction charge is struck down. His conduct and his background are far more egregious than other misdemeanor January 6th cases.

     Even with the guilty plea, he has refused to take responsibility. After Trump's guilty verdict, he posted on his Facebook page that he was "voting for the felon" in 2024. A felon facing a separate felony charge voting for a guy convicted of 34 felonies and facing 54 others sounds about right. It goes beyond general pro-Trump crap people his age like to post on social media. On New Year's Day 2024, just weeks before his guilty plea, he posted a meme repeating the debunked claim that there were "tour guides" during the January 6th insurrection, echoing the claims he had made soon after his arrest that he had been set up. 

     Even that is not the most disturbing thing to come from his social media. In a January 11th post, he shares a picture of his daughter Maria, the daughter he served prison time for trafficking. In it, he says that he "misses her terribly," that she "wants to see him," and that they "talk every day." He refuses to accept responsibility for this criminal case, too, saying that he was imprisoned because "the communist government did not like a gringo adopting an Indian Child" before finishing, "well love cannot separate us." I wonder what kind of love he means. She is in her early 20s now, and Mr. Marroquin sexually abused two teenage girls under the protection of a Catholic charity. There's a creepy theme that runs throughout his page; political and social opinions seem to mean more to Michael when they come from the mouths of underage girls. He's evidently single, now, which might make a man of his age with his history and narcissistic tendencies more willing to break the law yet again.

     I've reached out to Michael Marroquin and haven't had a response. I'll reach out to the authorities next and see what they think of his post, in which he describes either bringing her to the United States or leaving for Bolivia. Each of those seem equally creepy. Michael doesn't deserve to see his daughter again. He doesn't deserve to own a business like the one he owns. He deserves his freedom least of all. You can't run the clock forever, Michael. Tick tock.