CHICAGO – When a Mexican immigrant was released from an ICE detention facility earlier this month, he was freed in El Paso, Texas – hundreds of miles away from where he lives in Minnesota – and without his ID.
There are currently more than 70,000 people in ICE custody; and with that, federal court data shows there has been a record number of habeas petitions filed in the past year by immigration attorneys arguing that their clients’ arrests and detention are unlawful.
Federal Judge Laura Provinzino ordered the government to respond, and when they didn’t, she didn’t just take exception with the lack of response – she held an assistant U.S. attorney in contempt.
In a follow-up order issued late last week, the assistant U.S. attorney acknowledged his oversights in the case and that this one had slipped “through the cracks.”
Provinzino wrote that she expects the U.S. government to follow her orders, noting that “the inability of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to fulfill its duty to ensure compliance with judicial orders has real consequences for real people…”
She went on to write that identification documents “are not trivial pieces of paper” but instruments of liberty and personhood and that “having one’s identification documents is central to modern life…”
Her ruling represents what immigration attorneys say is a reality of immigration enforcement under the most recent Trump administration – that requests for documents to be returned to someone have to be litigated in federal court.
“Now, as simple as a return of documents have to be litigated – where is the judicial efficiency here,” Bindu Vijayan, an immigration attorney in Chicago told NBC 5 Investigates last week.
While it’s not clear is how often identification documents are being withheld from freed ICE detainees. NBC 5 Investigates spoke with four immigration attorneys in Chicago who said this is a recurring issue. Laura Smith, a Chicago immigration attorney with the Children’s Legal Center, said she has 13 clients who’ve faced similar experiences.
Smith filed a lawsuit over this very issue in 2022 in a case that’s still spending. In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, attorneys representing the U.S. government argued that they have to withhold personal identification because otherwise it would be more difficult to deport the individuals. While a 2023 ICE memo does state that documents like IDs can be confiscated, the same policy states that certified copies can be provided on request.
DHS and ICE have so far not responded to questions posed by NBC 5 Investigates. A spokeswoman told NBC 5 Investigates by email that our request was being processed. The agencies did not reply to a follow-up email on Tuesday.
