A 19-year-old, arrested and taken into custody at Monterey County Jail by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will not be deported after a federal judge dismissed removal proceedings against him. ICE took Juan Manuel Martinez into custody in March after he had agreed to a no-contest for the misdemeanor of trespassing.
But Martinez, who was six years old when he was illegally brought into the US and has no other criminal convictions, was wrongly identified as a member of a gang while at Monterey jail. This meant that ICE guidelines put him as a top priority to for deportation. His deportation hearing was scheduled to take place in October.
On 4 May, Martinez was freed in a bond hearing by his attorneys. Five days later, a motion to dismiss deportation proceedings was filed by a Department of Homeland Security attorney and a federal judge granted the motion at the end of the month. Martinez’s attorney, Blanca Zarazua, says that the motion was a good sign. His attorneys had argued that ICE should not have picked him up in the first place, given his protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
In Santa Cruz and Monterey counties last week, 25 undocumented immigrants were arrested as part of the ongoing stepping up of enforcement actions by the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump. There have been over 41,000 arrests across the country since Trump took office.