A federal judge last week ordered Homeland Security to release three illegal immigrants with homicide convictions on their criminal records and a fourth illegal immigrant convicted of sex crimes.
DHS had made immigration arrests on the four and wanted to keep them in detention to try to orchestrate their deportation.
But Judge John W. deGravelles, an Obama appointee to the court in Louisiana, ordered each of them released, saying they’ve been held too long and there’s no imminent likelihood that their home countries of Cuba and Ethiopia will take them back.
The U.S. government says it’s searching for other nations to take them, but Judge deGravelles said that’s too speculative right now to keep them in detention.
“Petitioners are currently detained in violation of their constitutional rights. Further, they have been detained with no opportunity to arrange for care for their dependents, pets, or homes; the court can only assume that bills have gone unpaid, jobs may have been lost, and petitioners may be released into housing and food instability, all because the government unlawfully detained them,” the judge wrote.
DHS issued a scathing press release decrying the releases, predicting the result will be “the continued rape, murder, assault and robbery of more American victims.”
“Releasing these monsters is inexcusably reckless,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “We are applying the law as written. If an immigration judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”
She said the men’s convictions should have been compelling evidence for keeping them in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention.
Judge deGravelles, though, said those criminal records was “irrelevant” to his decision.
“Each was convicted of a crime, and each served his sentence. And then ICE itself determined that each should be released into regular, free civilian life,” he said. “Petitioners’ criminal histories are not at issue here, and the parties have not suggested that any part of this case would be different for similarly situated petitioners without the same criminal history.”
He added: “In short, respondents’ assertion that petitioners were criminals is irrelevant to the analysis here.”
The releases are the latest in a growing legal battle over DHS’s new aggressive detention policies.
Migrants who in the past were caught and released are now being taken into custody as ICE tries to boost its removal numbers.
That’s spurred a record number of “habeas corpus” filings from migrants asking U.S. district court judges to release them on the grounds that their constitutional rights were violated.
The district courts are overwhelmingly agreeing with that argument and rejecting ICE’s detention logic.
The four migrants are: Ibrahim Ali Mohammed, from Ethiopia, convicted of sexual exploitation of a minor; Luis Gaston-Sanchez, a Cuban, convicted of homicide, assault, resisting arrest and robbery; Ricardo Blanco Chomat, a Cuban, convicted of homicide, kidnapping, aggravated assault with a firearm and selling cocaine; and Francisco Rodriguez-Romero, a Cuban convicted of homicide and a weapons offense.
All were being held at prison space ICE is renting from Louisiana, known as the Louisiana Lockup.
All four have standing deportation orders.
But they fall under a loophole in the law that arises when migrants’ home countries refuse to take them back.
Under a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, the Zadvydas decision, migrants cannot be held in detention for longer than six months unless there’s a reasonable chance they are about to be deported.
Zadvydas has led to releases of tens of thousands of criminal aliens over the decades.
