TACOMA, Wash. -- A Mexican man who has spent more than six weeks in immigration detention despite his participation in a program designed to prevent the deportation of those brought to the U.S. illegally as children was released from custody Wednesday pending deportation proceedings.
Daniel Ramirez Medina, 24, was welcomed by supporters in the lobby of a detention facility after he was freed. He nodded and smiled at reporters after he exited the building.
"We are very happy that Daniel was released today. It's been a very long day," said Luis Cortes, one of his attorneys.
Judge John Odell in Tacoma approved freeing Ramirez until his next immigration court hearing.
Immigration agents arrested him last month in suburban Seattle, saying he acknowledged affiliating with gangs. Officials then revoked his protected status.
Ramirez adamantly denies any gang ties or making any such admission.
He spent 40 minutes answering questions from prosecutors during a two-hour hearing Tuesday, repeatedly denying any gang connections, his attorney, Mark Rosenbaum, said.
"He answered every question the government put to him," Rosenbaum said. "He stayed true, and the government had no evidence whatsoever."
Rose Richeson, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, referred a request for comment to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday.
Immigration agents arrested Ramirez on Feb. 10 at an apartment complex where they had gone to arrest his father, a previously deported felon.
Ramirez, who came to the U.S. at age 7, has no criminal record and twice passed background checks to participate in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows young people to stay in the country and work.
Immigration officials have started deportation proceedings against him.
His attorneys have pressed claims in federal court that the arrest and detention violated Ramirez's constitutional rights, but a federal judge in Seattle last week upheld a decision not to release him, saying he instead should challenge his detention in immigration court.
Attorneys for Ramirez had canceled a previously scheduled bail hearing that could have resulted in an earlier release.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez nevertheless said "many questions remain regarding the appropriateness of the government's conduct" in arresting him.
Among those questions, his lawyers have said, is whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents misinterpreted a tattoo on his forearm when they described it as a "gang tattoo" in an arrest report. The lawyers say the tattoo, which says "La Paz BCS," pays homage to the city of La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, where he was born.
Ramirez's case is one of several recent arrests that have left immigration activists fearing an erosion of protections under the Deferred Action program instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Portland, Ore., on Sunday arrested Francisco Rodriguez Dominguez, a Deferred Action participant who was brought to the U.S. from Morelia, in Mexico's Michoacan state, at age 5. Last December, he entered a diversion program after a drunken-driving arrest and had attended all his court dates and required meetings, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon said in a statement.
The agency said Monday that it targeted Rodriguez Dominguez because of the DUI and that he would be released on bond pending deportation proceedings.
Ramirez's lawyers had sought to keep his case out of immigration court, which they said is ill-equipped to handle his claims that his arrest violated his constitutional rights to due process and to be free from unreasonable seizure.
The immigration judge set his bail at $15,000, which his lawyers say will be posted.
About 750,000 people have enrolled in the Deferred Action program since it began.
A Section on 03/30/2017