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LINCOLN — The Nebraska DACA recipient who had been placed in deportation proceedings and denied a bond hearing must be provided that hearing or be released, according to a federal judge’s order.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bazis’ on Tuesday called for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrange a bond hearing for Joel Angel-Becerril, 27, within seven days or to let him go immediately. He is being held at the Sarpy County Jail.
“Under this order, ICE can no longer unlawfully deny our client a bond hearing,” said Grant Friedman, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, which represents Angel-Becerril.
“He will have a chance to make his case for release on bond,” Friedman said. “This is a big step forward and we are hoping it means he will soon be back with his family.”
Schuyler mom waits
Angel-Becerril’s case is one of four lawsuits the ACLU of Nebraska has filed just this year on behalf of people in ICE custody. Friday, the civil liberties nonprofit filed a lawsuit on behalf of a longtime Schuyler resident and Mexican citizen who is jailed on an ICE hold and also has been denied a bond hearing.
In that case, the ACLU said, Lorena Alarcon-Alarcon has been in the Lincoln County Detention Center in North Platte since January following an arrest on suspicion of a misdemeanor. Her attorney said she has been in the United States for about 25 years and has three sons, two adults and a teenager.
The lawsuit argues that denial of her bond hearing violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and a federal judge’s order in a class action lawsuit that vacated ICE’s mandatory detention policy.
The ACLU Nebraska clients are among thousands nationally who have been denied a bond hearing based on ICE’s new mandatory detention policy that contends nearly all detained immigrants are ineligible for bond hearings that could release them to families while their deportation cases proceed in the court system.
So-called habeas petitions filed by the immigrants who assert their mandatory detention is illegal have risen to historic highs. ProPublica reported that immigrants filed more habeas cases in the first 13 months of the second Trump administration than in the past three administrations combined.
In Nebraska, about 57 cases have been filed last year and this year, according to ProPublica’s habeas tracker and habeas dockets in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska.
Two tracks
In her Tuesday order, Judge Bazis noted that while Angel-Becerril is entitled to a bond hearing, his detention after that is discretionary.
Last summer, he was charged with assault by strangulation or suffocation. According to the court order, ICE agents “encountered” him at the Douglas County jail “during a routine jail review” around five months later — and initiated deportation proceedings against him the same day. The ACLU said the assault charge was dismissed and Angel-Becerril has no criminal convictions.
Bazis said the Court has previously concluded that noncitizens detained within the interior of the U.S. and who have been present in the country for years are entitled to a bond hearing.
“It (the Court) reaches the same conclusion here based on its interpretation of the relevant statutory detention framework,” she said in the order.
Earlier this month, Bazis issued an order calling for ICE to arrange a bond hearing for Carlos Roldan Chang or, if that doesn’t happen, release the Guatemala native also represented by the ACLU Nebraska. Roldan Chang is being held at the ICE detention center in McCook.
In explaining further, the judge noted in the Angel-Becerril case that the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted statutes as establishing two tracks for the purposes of mandatory detention — one that applies to noncitizens “seeking admission into the country” and another that applies to noncitizens “already in the country.” She reiterated that Angel-Becerril falls within the latter track.
The judge did not contemplate Angel-Becerril’s status as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient. Some observers have viewed his circumstances as an escalation of immigration enforcement tactics.
Angel-Becerril, a graduate of Omaha Burke High, arrived from Mexico at about age 5 with his mother and younger sister, and has lived in Omaha almost his entire life. The DACA status he gained in 2015 remains active, his lawyers said. He has four siblings, three of them U.S. citizens, and worked full-time for an auto salvaging company.
Tailored for young immigrants who came to this country as children, DACA allows for a work permit and temporary protection from deportation, provided certain criteria are met. The Obama-era program faces ongoing legal challenges and is not a direct path to citizenship.
ACLU Nebraska officials said the Angel-Becerril lawsuit is its first immigration detention case involving a DACA recipient in the state. A half million DACA recipients live in the U.S., about 2,500 of them in Nebraska.
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