FILE - This undated file photo provided by the law firm Public Counsel shows Daniel Ramirez Medina, 23, who was was brought to the U.S. illegally as a child but was protected from deportation by President Barack Obama's administration. A federal magistrate in Seattle said Monday, Feb. 27, 2017 that he will not hold an immediate hearing on whether to release Ramirez, who was arrested by immigration agents despite his participation in federal program designed to protect those brought to the U.S. illegally as children. (Daniel Ramirez Medina/Public Counsel via AP, File) (Daniel Ramirez Medina)
SEATTLE – A Mexican man who was arrested despite his participation in a program designed to protect those brought to the U.S. illegally as children can be released from custody pending his deportation proceedings, an immigration judge ruled Tuesday.
Matt Adams, an attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, told The Associated Press that he expects Daniel Ramirez Medina, 24, to be released Wednesday following Judge John Odell's decision.
Immigration agents arrested Ramirez on Feb. 10 at a suburban Seattle apartment complex where they had gone to arrest his father, a previously deported felon. Agents said Ramirez, who came to the U.S. at age 7, acknowledged affiliating with gangs. He adamantly denies any gang ties or making any such admission.
Ramirez has no criminal record and twice passed background checks to participate in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country and work.
A federal judge in Seattle last week upheld a decision not to release Ramirez, saying he instead should challenge his detention in immigration court. U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez said "many questions remain regarding the appropriateness of the government's conduct" in arresting him.
Among those questions, his lawyers have said, are whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents misinterpreted a tattoo on his forearm when they described it as a "gang tattoo" in an arrest report. The lawyers say the tattoo, which says "La Paz BCS," pays homage to the city of La Paz in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, where he was born.
Ramirez's case is one of several recent arrests that have left immigration activists fearing an erosion of protections under the DACA program instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012.
ICE agents in Portland, Ore., on Sunday arrested Francisco J. Rodriguez Dominguez, a DACA participant who was brought to the U.S. from Morelia, in Mexico's Michoacan state, at age 5. Last December, he entered a diversion program following a drunken driving arrest and had attended all his court dates and required meetings, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon said in a statement.
The agency said Monday that it targeted Rodriguez Dominguez because of the DUI and that he would be released on bond pending deportation proceedings.
Ramirez's lawyers had sought to keep his case out of federal immigration court, which they said is ill-equipped to handle his claims that his arrest violated his constitutional rights to due process and to be free from unreasonable seizure.
The immigration judge set his bond at $15,000, which his lawyers say will be posted.
About 750,000 immigrants have enrolled in the DACA program since it began.
The hottest stories ripped from the headlines, from crime to courts, legal and scandal.
