A federal judge has decided in favor of a man in the U.S. without legal status who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in northwest Iowa more than two months ago.
Judge Leonard Strand ruled Armando Garcia Picazo should be immediately released after posting $6,000 bond. The ruling comes after Garcia Picazo sued the Woodbury County sheriff and federal officials because he was denied release on bond approved by an immigration judge.
Garcia Picazo was first detained at the Woodbury County Law Enforcement Center in Sioux City on Aug. 8. His attorney, Guy Weinstein, said ICE agents were conducting surveillance and took Garcia Picazo into custody because he resembled a person they were tracking.
Weinstein said his client came into the U.S. without authorization a decade ago. He had no criminal record and worked as a trained mechanic in the Sioux City metro area. Weinstein believes his client has a strong case to remain in the country legally.
“I feel badly for the immigrant families because a lot of the rhetoric that we're hearing about this administration trying to remove all the terrible people, all the bad people with criminal history," Weinstein said. “But what the public doesn't realize is that there are a lot of individuals like Armando Garcia Picazo who have zero criminal history. They've been here in the community for a number of years, and this administration is trying to remove them.”
Weinstein added that anti-immigrant rhetoric is making his clients' lives harder.
“It's terrible because the immigrant client is a marginalized person in our community, and they already have a hard enough time,” Weinstein said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported on Monday that more than half-a-million people have been removed from the country and 1.6 million have voluntarily self-deported.
“What this administration is doing is making it really, really challenging for anyone who's caught up in immigration detention to be released," Weinstein said. "They have to go forward with a habeas [corpus] case in order to be released."
Habeas corpus is a legal action that challenges the lawfulness of someone’s detention and ensures the government can’t hold someone indefinitely without legal basis.
Similar cases in Iowa
Strand, the judge in Garcia Picazo's case, recently made a similar ruling in another case. He said Noel Lopez De La Cruz of Mt. Pleasant should have a bond hearing before an immigration judge.
Lopez De La Cruz, 24, lived most of his life in the U.S. ICE took him into custody in August from the Muscatine County Jail, where he was being held on a charge of marijuana possession. The charges were dropped.
Weinstein doesn’t represent Lopez De La Cruz, but his law firm in Omaha, Neb., has more than 1,000 cases pending in immigration court.
A lawyer with a passion for helping immigrants
While attending Creighton University in Omaha, Weinstein fell in love with immigration law.
“I was a second-year law student right about when DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]came out,” Weinstein said. “It was a really exciting time to get into immigration law because DACA was so new and I just fell in love with immigration law and helping immigrants. I actually studied abroad in Mexico, where I learned Spanish.”
DACA is a policy that offers protection from deportation and a work permit to eligible immigrants brought into the country as children.
Weinstein volunteered for the organization Justice for Our Neighbors, now known as the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement. In private practice, he works with people from across the world.
As for Garcia Picazo, he is expected to have a hearing next week before an immigration judge to continue his quest to stay in the country.
“He will have his case here in Omaha, but it will be on the non-detained docket, which is a much slower docket, and it allows him and me — as his attorney — to find what forms of relief he'll be eligible for, and he'll be allowed to stay here while he's applying for those forms of relief,” Weinstein said.
