Rosales is an assistant to a dermatologist and the founder and director of Vestige Winter Guard, an Orlando-based indoor color guard troupe. After being arrested earlier this month, she learned that ICE had a removal order for her from June 28, 2017, which stemmed from her failure to appear at a 2014 hearing.
She filed a habeas petition challenging her detention and on July 11 a judge ordered that she not be transferred out of Massachusetts while her case progressed.
Rosales’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said she has never been charged with a crime. ICE arrested her this month without a warrant, Joun wrote in his order, and a warrant for her removal appeared to have been completed only after she had been detained.
Pomerleau said his colleague was permitted to speak to Rosales in person at the Burlington facility on Friday, a week after her detention began. During that visit, Rosales wrote an account of the conditions at the facility, which she described as “tough.”
“There have been days we have not showered, we’ve been in the same clothes for weeks, and the food is inedible,” she wrote in the document.
She described nights sleeping in a room with seven other women in an extremely hot room, and having to “beg for water.”
In his order, Joun described the Burlington facility as one which “ICE itself admits is not equipped to serve as housing.”
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Joun’s order or the conditions at the facility.
In a statement on Friday, an ICE spokesperson said that Rosales had “illegally overstayed her visa and remained in the country for over eight years since being ordered removed.”
The spokesperson wrote that ICE encourages non-citizens to self-deport from the U.S.
Rosales wrote in her handwritten statement that she is finishing a degree at a college in Miami college and hopes to one day work as a dermatology nurse practitioner.
“I believe I am a worthy member of society,” she wrote.
The order for her release allows Rosales to return to her home in south Florida.
Ariela Lopez can be reached at ariela.lopez@globe.com. Follow her on X @ariela__lopez.