SLO County father charged with son’s heat death was here illegally, U.S. attorney says
The father whose 6-year-old son died after being left in a car during a heat wave in Paso Robles was undocumented and in the country illegally, according to U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
Briant Reyes Estrada, 27, was arrested Sunday after his child died in the hospital on Saturday of suspected heat-related injuries. Reyes Estrada was charged with murder and willful harm to a child on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to the crimes on Wednesday.
Reyes Estrada is alleged to have left his child in his vehicle in the parking lot of the Paso Robles Inn on Saturday, according to the Paso Robles Police Department. The temperature there reached a peak of 99 degrees on Saturday, according to meteorologist John Lindsey, breaking a record set in 1997.
Essayli said on social media that Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer to deport Reyes Estrada after he was arrested on what Essayli labeled “felony charges” two weeks earlier, while adding that California’s sanctuary state laws allowed him to be released from jail.
Court documents do not show Reyes Estrada having any past felonies, but he was previously charged with misdemeanor false impersonation, misdemeanor forging a driver’s license and two misdemeanor counts of embezzlement in February.
San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow clarified that Reyes Estrada was arrested in relation to the February misdemeanor charges on April 29. He was not alleged to have committed any felonies at that time, Dow said.
According to Reyes Estrada’s former supervisor Matt Griffith, Reyes Estrada was using his former manager’s name and company card to purchase at least $1,000 of goods from Cambria Hardware Store in the months after he was fired in September 2024. Court documents show Reyes Estrada was banned from the store in May.
“Had California allowed local law enforcement to honor the immigration detainer against this defendant, this child would be alive today,” Essayli said.
California’s sanctuary state law was passed in 2017. It bars local law enforcement from notifying federal authorities if a person accused of a crime has undocumented status. It also prohibits state and local agencies from investigating someone for immigration enforcement purposes.
Reyes Estrada’s attorney Patrick Fisher, however, told The Tribune the U.S. Attorney’s Office and other people are using the child’s death as a prop for political rants expressing frustrations with immigration policy, calling the debate “shameful.”
Griffith and another former coworker who declined to be named said Reyes Estrada was reported to Child Welfare Services at least twice for leaving his child in the car while he worked at the Fireside Inn on Moonstone Beach in Cambria.
Paso Robles Police Department Chief Damian Nord told The Tribune he was aware of previous child welfare reports.
Nancy Kuster, who oversees Child Welfare Services as the deputy director for the San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services, told The Tribune she could not confirm or deny previous reports, but she added that the agency was investigating the death.
SLO County district attorney comments on boy’s death
Dow shared Essayli’s social media post on his own social media, echoing Essayli’s statement that because of California’s sanctuary state laws the jail could not act on ICE’s detainer for Reyes Estrada.
“Had Mr. Reyes Estrada been properly detained, he would not have been free and able to do what he is alleged to have done to his child on May 10th,” Dow wrote on his post. “This child’s death would very likely not have happened. #EndSanctuaryStateNow.”
Dow told The Tribune that in a U.S. attorney’s briefing Wednesday morning, the agency told him that Reyes Estrada had previously attempted to enter the country at the southern border but had been apprehended and returned to Mexico. At some point after Reyes Estrada was sent back, he reentered the country unlawfully, Dow said.
It is unclear at this time when Reyes Estrada reentered the country or whether he had his child with him when he returned, Dow said.
Because of California’s sanctuary state law, law enforcement officials cannot cooperate with federal immigration detainers as they are administrative actions. Exceptions to the law include if the person being held had previously been convicted of a qualifying violent crime or if a federal judge issued an arrest warrant, Dow said.
“Just the accusation alone that caused them to be put in jail is not sufficient to give the sheriff any leeway. So the Sheriff’s Office, my understanding, is, he had no leeway and ability to hold them,” Dow said.
While Reyes Estrada’s immigration status does not matter for the purpose of the prosecution, Dow said, it does matter because the child shouldn’t have died.
“His father is alleged to have left him in his car and ... he’s innocent until proven guilty. We’ll wait and see,” Dow said. “What I can tell you is that if a person who is here unlawfully is subject to a detention which reportedly from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, this man was subject to detention. Had he been detained, on May 10 of this year he would not have been able to bring his son to work, as alleged, and leave him in a car.”
Had California not been a sanctuary state, Dow said the father would have remained detained and custody of the child would have been given to a family member or Child Welfare Services.
Dow said he believes it’s time for the state Legislature to repeal the California sanctuary laws to prevent similar situations from occurring.
“We as people of the state of California have an obligation to follow federal law, and we might not like it. Some people in our community might not like those laws, but for us to say we’re going to remove ourselves from that is kind of like a city within San Luis Obispo County saying, ‘Well ... we’re not going to recognize the sheriff’s authority in our city,’” Dow said. “In my opinion, it’s really inappropriate and doesn’t matter who the president is.”
Father’s lawyer says U.S. Attorney is using child death as ‘political prop’
In an email to The Tribune, Fisher said the U.S. Attorney’s Office and others in the community are “trying to use this poor child as a prop for their own political rants about their frustration with immigration policy.”
“These people are disgusting,” Fisher said. “The fact that our local news outlets have allowed news of this child’s death to be steered into an immigration policy debate is shameful.”
Fisher condemned what he claimed was unverified information contained in news reports and urged news outlets to be more careful about the information they report.
“It may be asking a lot, but my hope is that potential witnesses would save their statements for the investigators,” Fisher said. “For the rest of the community, put your pitchforks away. You don’t know the whole story.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM with the headline "SLO County father charged with son’s heat death was here illegally, U.S. attorney says."
