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<\/p>\nThis story is the second part of a three-part series detailing detailing how U.S. immigration enforcement policies affect the people caught up in the process<\/p>\n
After a Tulsa couple was arrested for immigration violations last fall, they endured months of detention as a tangled federal court system handled their fate with procedural distance.<\/p>\n
Ramirez and her husband Vasquez were arrested for immigration violations in Tulsa last August, even though they\u2019re protected from deportation while awaiting a U visa reserved for victims of violent crimes who help law enforcement catch the perpetrators.<\/p>\n
KOSU is only using their surnames because they fear retaliation from federal immigration officials during their pending visa case. This is the second part in a three-part series about their experience.<\/p>\n
Ramirez is a victim of rape, which is why she qualifies for the U visa. She\u2019s also epileptic. A neurologist prescribes her medication to help manage her seizures.<\/p>\n
After a week at the Tulsa County Jail, during which she said she had no access to her medicine, Ramirez was transported to Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s supposed to take meds and vitamin supplements several times a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very sick,\u201d she said. \u201cI had three seizures on my last day there.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she got to Bluebonnet, Ramirez had to get a letter from her doctor proving she needed the medication. Three days into her stint there, her daughter drove to Texas to drop off the pills. But the medication lapse, which made her seizures more frequent and severe, wasn\u2019t the only problem, Ramirez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the worst thing that I\u2019ve ever lived,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause it was far. People treated me poorly. The food was disgusting. I lost 25 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the food often was stale and moldy, and that some of the other Latinas were mean to her, on account of her Mexican heritage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d think we\u2019d all have each other\u2019s backs,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cBut no. There were a handful of Mexican women. The rest were Colombians, Cubans and Venezuelans. I had to be careful so they wouldn\u2019t steal my things or hit me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twice a week, Ramirez said, ICE officers summoned her and others from their bunks and asked them to sign voluntary removal forms \u2013 to self-deport. The officers promised their cases would be expedited and they would be out of detention.<\/p>\n
But with the help of attorneys at the Tulsa-based immigration law firm Rivas and Associates, which Ramirez\u2019s adult daughter called, Ramirez was released on bond after four months.<\/p>\n
And while the release order from immigration court shares no details as to why Ramirez was let go, her lawyer, Elissa Stiles, said it was most likely because the judge took a holistic view of the case: How Ramirez entered the country, her lack of criminal history and her pending U visa application, and determined she wasn\u2019t a dangerous flight risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn any bond situation, it’s a reflection of all the factors, really,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cThey’ll take into account, maybe time and roots in the United States. Other U.S. citizens or lawful resident family members, friends, the community that’s going to make sure that they go to their court and everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that while immigration judges are bound by decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals, a sort of high immigration court within the Department of Justice, and by federal district and appellate decisions, they have a wide range of discretion in how they rule in any given case, based on the relevant facts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a very subjective determination,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cSo you could \u2014 and would \u2014 get the same case presented to different immigration judges and get different results. That’s sort of the way it works.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Ramirez\u2019s husband, the same judicial discretion that led to her release would make his legal proceedings much less forgiving.<\/p>\n
For Vasquez, layers of court proceedings with conflicting and confusing outcomes<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vasquez won the right to an immigration bond hearing in the Western District Court of Oklahoma with the help of lawyers at Rivas and Associates, but the judge who heard his bond denied his release on the basis that Vasquez is a flight risk. The judge used the fact that Vasquez had traveled to Mexico and back to the United States twice in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n
Vasquez spent a month in Tulsa County Jail after being transported to the CoreCivic Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, where he would spend seven months. In total, he\u2019d attend 13 different immigration court hearings with little understanding of what was happening.<\/p>\n
After each, he said, he came out more confused than the last.<\/p>\n
\u201cRivas’s lawyers only came to visit me once here in Tulsa, and then a month later they came to visit me in Cushing,\u201d Vasquez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they didn’t do anything for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI pretty much represented myself. They were missing a lot of documents. They were missing a lot of evidence. They didn’t fight hard enough for me because they couldn’t get me out. And we couldn\u2019t pay more\u201d<\/p>\n
Cost is one of the many barriers<\/a> people swept up in the immigration dragnet face when looking for representation, be that in federal district court or immigration court. Vasquez paid Rivas and Associates about $12,000 for their representation, and while their work on Vasquez\u2019s behalf didn\u2019t result in his release, it did result in a win of sorts.<\/p>\n Vasquez had been denied a bond hearing in immigration court that could have resulted in his release. Attorneys at Rivas filed a habeas corpus lawsuit against ICE in the Western District Court of Oklahoma, on the grounds that Vasquez was being wrongfully detained and was entitled to a bond hearing.<\/p>\n Stiles, the couple\u2019s attorney at Rivas, explained what that means in a February phone interview shortly after she filed the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cHabeas is generally used\u2026 to challenge detention or other conditions on someone’s liberty,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cIn my case, I’m challenging that they’re being detained under the wrong statute and that it’s unlawful that they’re being detained without the process of being able to ask for a bond.\u201d<\/p>\n The federal judge agreed with Stiles and granted Vasquez a bond hearing, but it didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were granted our petition and the respondents were ordered to provide him with a prompt bond hearing, so that was great news.\u201d Stiles said. \u201cThen we had the bond hearing, but the immigration judge denied the bond.\u201d<\/p>\n The immigration judge\u2019s reason: Vasquez has at least two prior immigration violations and presents a flight risk.<\/p>\n The judge used the fact that Vasquez had traveled to Mexico and back to the United States twice in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n \u201cThat put us in such a hard position,\u201d Stiles said. \u201cBut we’re not alone in that. I mean, I’m on a Listserv and Facebook groups with a lot of other habeas practitioners across the country. We’re all seeing, you know, very much the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, ICE appealed many of the bond hearings that were granted. Attorneys at Rivas and around the country managed to secure for their clients at the district level, so the question of whether people like Vasquez should get bond hearings remains an open question in some parts of the country.<\/p>\n For Rivas and Associates, the fight to secure Vasquez’s release on bond was over. But the firm is continuing its efforts to ensure others in Vasquez\u2019s situation get their bond hearings, even if it means they don\u2019t get released.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve entered in this case to defend the habeas because it’s, I mean, it’s just so important for all of my clients that we have a strong defense at the circuit level,\u201d Stiles said.<\/p>\n There are dozens of habeas corpus lawsuits like Vasquez\u2019s in district and circuit courts across the country, Stiles said, in which judges have made clashing rulings on whether immigration detainees should be granted bond.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil we get a decision across the nation, where somebody is physically detained matters a whole lot for whether they’re going to get a bond,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd ICE is constantly moving people. If you get moved to a place that’s really negative for that issue, then you’re stuck\u2026 So it’s very much a geographic roulette at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the latest rulings on this question is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit case Fidencio Hernandez Alvarez v. The United States<\/a>. The Florida appeals court agrees with the lower Florida District court’s decision to grant the petitioners a bond hearing and, consequently, with Oklahoma\u2019s district court as well.<\/p>\n Judge Stanley Marcus wrote the majority opinion.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question we face today is whether unadmitted aliens found in the interior of the United States are eligible for bond while they go through immigration proceedings,\u201d Judge Marcus wrote. \u201cFor nearly thirty years, the answer to that question was, for most aliens, ‘yes.’ Last year, the Department of Homeland Security (\u201cDHS\u201d) took a different view. It now maintains that these aliens must be detained without bond\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n