In a rare win against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, a judge ordered that a detained 19-year-old asylum-seeker be released back to his family.
Oliver Mata Velasquez’s arrest outside a Buffalo, New York, court hearing on his asylum process was unlawful, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo wrote.
“Mata Velasquez followed all the rules,” Vilardo wrote, “On the other hand, the government changed the rules by fiat, applied them retroactively, and pulled the rug out from under Mata Velasquez and many like him who tried to do things the right way.”
“The court was rightfully outraged at the detention to begin with.”
In the weeks since, lawyers for Mata Velasquez said Vilardo’s order could influence similar cases and, they hope, lead to ICE releasing others arrested in immigration court.
Now, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other organizations have sued the Trump administration, seeking to end the practice of courthouse arrests nationwide.
Mata Velasquez was one of hundreds of people taken by ICE during its new practice of stationing agents outside of immigration courts around the country to make arrests when people show up for routine hearings. While judges have released several people arrested in the stakeouts on bond, few have ordered their outright release.
That’s what makes Mata Velasquez’s case so unique, said attorney Amy Belsher, who worked on the case and is the director of Immigrants’ Rights Litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“Outright release is really rare in an immigration case,” she said. “The court was rightfully outraged at the detention to begin with.”
The order could open the door for other defendants to find similar relief, said Sarah Gillman, director of strategic U.S. litigation with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and one of Mata Velasquez’s attorneys.
