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A Mexican asylum seeker who was detained outside of Portland Immigration Court on June 2 must be immediately released, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Baggio ruled on Monday afternoon.
Through a string of questioning, Baggio concluded that the government had produced shaky justification for its choice to arrest the asylum seeker.
“The government here failed to follow its own rules,” Baggio said. “They arrested first, they sought to justify later, and then they changed the alleged basis for the detention. There is a right way to do this and there is a wrong way to do this. My assessment is that the government went about its arrest in the wrong way.”
Baggio’s ruling means that the asylum seeker, identified in court documents only by her initials, OJM, will be released from the Tacoma Immigration and Customs Enforcement Center, where she has been held in solitary confinement for more than 40 days, according to attorney Jordan Cunnings with the Innovation Law Lab. “We are coordinating right now to make sure she’s released,” Cunnings said immediately after the hearing, adding she hopes it’s “as soon as possible today.”
“She’s not doing great. She’s a victim of trauma. She suffered horrific sexual violence in Mexico, that’s why she fled and sought asylum here,” Cunnings says. “Her arrest was really re-traumatizing her as someone who’s been a victim of assault and then having to be held in solitary, that’s obviously no joke. So we’re really grateful that this will be her last day.”
In the original filing from June 2, OJM’s attorneys said she was seeking asylum in the U.S. after suffering persecution in Mexico due to her gender identity and perceived sexual orientation. (OJM is a transgender woman.) That abuse included a 2021 kidnapping by the Knights Templar cartel, otherwise known as “Caballeros Templarios.”
OJM was the first known arrest made by U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement outside a downtown Portland courtroom. WW first reported her arrest in June.
The government’s counsel, including assistant attorney Ariana Garousi, maintained in today’s hearing that OJM “could’ve been subjected to removal” at any time.
But in Baggio’s courtroom, newly-seen transcripts from June 2—the day OJM was arrested—presented a vastly different narrative. In that hearing, the immigration judge who oversaw the proceedings had explained to OJM that if she accepted dismissal on her removal proceedings, the department wouldn’t seek to remove her back to her home country, ultimately convincing her to do so.
“[That’s] the one line that’s seared in my memory,” Baggio said, as she looked toward Garousi. “That just wasn’t true, was it?”
But instead of dismissing her removal proceedings after her hearing, four ICE agents arrested OJM right outside of her courtroom hearing. They did so on the justification that they had placed OJM in expedited removal proceedings, a faster process for deporting individuals. During the Monday hearing, Baggio determined OJM was never actually placed in expedited removal proceedings, which Garousi affirmed, leaving a hole in the government’s justification for her arrest.
Baggio said this showed OJM had been “actively misinformed” about what agreeing to a dismissal would entail.
Cunnings, OJM’s attorney, says before expedited removal arrests started occurring more frequently, dismissal could be “a good thing.” Dismissal, she says, could allow asylum seekers to seek asylum affirmatively before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services instead of before immigration court, and some people “affirmatively seek dismissal,” she said.
“I think the judge was probably speaking to that sort of past experience, as opposed to this new world where the government is trying to use these proceedings as a bait and switch to put people into rapid deportation,” Cunnings added.
In court, Baggio also asked about two instances where OJM had been contacted twice by ICE officials with no access to an attorney, even though she is illiterate and ICE is aware of her legal counsel. Garousi did not dispute that OJM had been deprived of counsel.
Another long, uncomfortable silence ensued when Baggio asked Garousi whether the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security present at OJM’s original trial was aware that she would be arrested by four agents right outside the courtroom. “Your honor, I believe so but I need to get clarification,” Garousi answered, adding she was unaware if the immigration judge in the June 2 case was aware of the ICE agents outside.
For the Immigration Law Lab, OJM is the last of five petitioners they’ve represented thus far in similar cases. All have been released.
Detentions in Oregon have risen since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, though the number of arrests has thus far remained lower than those in neighboring states.
“We’re extremely relieved,” Cunnings said. “The judge referenced how awful it is that the government’s shifting justifications for her detention prolonged her detention, because we think we could have gotten our order from the court sooner had they been forthcoming about the basis for her detention.”
