A federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to release a man arrested by ICE last week amid his involvement in a lawsuit challenging immigration raids in Los Angeles.
US District Judge Michelle Williams ordered the government to immediately release Isaac Antonio Villegas Molina, a Pasadena resident who was arrested last week during a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Williams also prohibited the government from re-arresting Villegas without giving notice and a hearing before a “neutral judge.”
In his order, Williams noted that the government did not object to a request last week for Villegas’ release, “suggesting that his re-arrest may not have been warranted.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Villegas’ immigration attorney said they were waiting for confirmation that he had been released.
Villegas sued the federal government last year after he and two other day laborers were arrested by immigration agents on June 18 while waiting at a bus stop in Pasadena. An immigration judge ordered Villegas, who is from Panama, released on a $5,000 bond the following month, and he has been under ICE surveillance ever since.
He is scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on Friday to file a motion to have his case dismissed.
Immigration lawyers and attorneys have said they believe Villegas was arrested to avenge the crime. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security previously told the Times that Villegas was arrested “after multiple violations of his supervised release — including missing the required check-in.”
Villegas’ attorney said he followed all the rules of his supervised release.
“This is absolutely outrageous,” Villegas’ attorney, Stacy Tolchin, said Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the judge’s order Thursday.
After Villegas was arrested last week, Tolchin filed a petition in federal court, contesting his arrest and demanding his immediate release. In it, Tolchin described the lawsuit as “one of the first lawsuits filed challenging the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
In a separate request for a temporary restraining order seeking Villegas’ release, Tolchin said immigration officials arrested and detained his client “without legal justification in violation of fundamental and due process.”
“In doing so, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted to change the immigration judge’s place in the non-arrest docket to the Adelanto detainee calendar, and unfortunately he was involved in the shopping for a more favorable judge,” said Tolchin.
Tolchin argued that the Adelanto immigration court is “the best forum for DHS” and noted that four out of five immigration judges have “almost 88 percent asylum denial rates.”
Judge Villegas is expected to leave before Friday with a disapproval rate of only 55%, according to Tolchin.
“This forum shopping is consistent with DHS’s efforts to undermine the neutrality of the immigration removal process,” Tolchin said in his filing.
In granting the temporary restraining order, Williams ordered the government to reinstate Villegas’ removal from the “non-arrest docket.”
“We welcome this swift and much-needed release of Isaac, which is proof that the government’s actions are illegal,” said Lauren Wilfong, an attorney for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “ICE must be held accountable for their heinous and indefensible actions.”
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Counsel, other groups and private lawyers filed a lawsuit – now known as Vasquez Perdomo vs. Mullin – on behalf of several immigrant rights groups, Villegas and two other migrants took to the bus stop, along with two US citizens, one of whom was arrested despite showing the agents his ID.
Villegas was waiting with other day laborers, including Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and Carlos Osorto, when masked armed men came violently and arrested them “for their appearance,” Tolchin said in the habeas petition. The arrests took place as part of Operation at Large, a large-scale immigration operation in Southern California.
The Vasquez Perdomo case resulted in the first temporary restraining order granted by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. That restraining order was later stayed by the Supreme Court. The case is still ongoing, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for September.
