A Mexican immigrant with the legal right to work in the US has been released from federal custody after his arrest last month by US authorities. Arrested in Seattle, 24-year-old Daniel Ramirez Medina, was released on Wednesday. But, according to an official with US immigration authorities, legal wrangling over his immigration status continues.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers alleged that Ramirez should be deported because he had ties to gangs. His attorneys, who decry their client’s arrest as unconstitutional, have denied this claim. Ramirez has no criminal record and is a ‘Dreamer’, brought to the US by his parents when he was a child. Around 750,000 immigrants in similar circumstances have been given protection from deportation via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, created in 2012 via executive order by President Barack Obama.
Other Dreamers are taking note of the Ramirez case, afraid that they could also be caught up in the Trump administration’s more aggressive stance on immigration enforcement. Ramirez was released on a bond of $15,000 by an immigration judge this week, as confirmed by ICE on Wednesday.
Mark Rosenbaum, Ramirez’s lawyer, has released a statement calling Ramirez’s release an “important first step toward justice”. The Department of Justice administers immigration courts, in which deportation cases must be heard under US law. But Ramirez’s attorneys believe he has the right to go to federal court to challenge the circumstances of his arrest.