Scranton<\/a> said immigration authorities did not follow her order to immediately free a man detained in Pike County because agents made him wear an ankle monitor once he left the jail.<\/p>\nThe Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement requirement that Ronil Jose Gonzalez Centeno wear an ankle monitor \u201cessentially keeps him in custody\u201d and ran afoul of U.S. District Court Judge Julia Munley\u2019s order Jan. 13 to release him because his detention violated his Fifth Amendment due process rights, Munley said last week.<\/p>\n
DHS and the U.S. Attorney General\u2019s Office removed Gonzalez Centeno\u2019s monitoring device, but only after Munley rejected the government\u2019s \u201cKafkaesque\u201d reasoning for why they required it in the first place, Munley’s order and other records show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did not authorize the ankle monitor or any further conditions,\u201d Munley said of her order freeing Gonzalez Centeno. \u201cDHS acted without authority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gonzalez Centeno\u2019s surveillance upon release from jail \u2014 which, according to the docket, lasted nearly two weeks \u2014 is hardly unique, said his lawyer, Karen Hoffmann, of Philadelphia. \u201cWe are seeing this happen all over the country,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She pointed to a case in New Jersey in which a federal judge in early January found that ICE broke its own regulations by ordering restrictions on a man who was ordered freed. Later in January, before Munley ruled on Gonzalez-Centeno\u2019s case, Munley ordered that ICE end its \u201cunilateral imposition\u201d of release conditions on a man that were not imposed by an immigration judge at a bond hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially, the government is trying to punish people with surveillance even after a judge says they should be free,\u201d Hoffmann said in an email. \u201cDespite federal orders granting release or bond hearings, DHS is taking it upon themselves to shackle clients with GPS ankle monitors \u2014 conditions that were neither requested by the government during litigation nor authorized by the court.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of Jan. 24, ICE imposed some level of electronic surveillance on 180,079 people, including 40,661 ankle monitors, according to the latest detention data released by ICE. In the Philadelphia Field Office \u2014 which covers Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia \u2014 1,150 people wore ankle monitors.<\/p>\n
It was impossible to tell from the data, however, how many of those were imposed on noncitizens unilaterally by ICE despite judicial orders for their release. Federal authorities did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 14, immigration law groups Carolina Migrant Network and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights sued ICE in North Carolina\u2019s federal courts for records tied to the agency\u2019s ankle monitor policies. ICE has not yet responded to the lawsuit, records show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile labeled as an \u2018alternative\u2019 to physical detention, ICE\u2019s (alternative to detention) program is not an actual alternative to detention but rather a different form of ICE custody over noncitizens, including physical restraint on individuals\u2019 bodies and movements,\u201d the groups\u2019 lawyers said.<\/p>\n
That included Gonzalez Centeno, a Venezuelan citizen who has lived in southeastern Pennsylvania for more than three years.<\/p>\n
Through his attorney, Hoffmann, Gonzalez Centeno declined to comment.<\/p>\n
DHS detained Gonzalez Centeno after he entered the country in 2022 but decided to release him into the country on parole rather than keep him in continuous physical custody, court records show.<\/p>\n
He got a job as a construction worker, lived with family and had no criminal record.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 20, during a routine check-in at ICE\u2019s Philadelphia field office, agents detained him and held him without a bond hearing under a reading of the Immigration and Naturalization Act that required mandatory detention \u2014 part of a change in DHS policy under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
He was held at Pike County’s jail, which is one of four facilities used by ICE in Pennsylvania to house immigration detainees. There were 241 immigrants detained there as of late January, according to the latest detention data.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez Centeno spent nearly two months in custody until Munley granted his motion for release by finding \u2014 alongside federal judges in hundreds of other cases \u2014 that ICE and DHS\u2019s reading of the INS was flawed and that Gonzalez Centeno should have been held under a section that entitled him to a bond hearing.<\/p>\n
DHS released him but not without first affixing an ankle monitor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge’s order to free a Venezuelan immigrant was undermined by an ankle monitor, underscoring wider concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-105132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}