ORLANDO, Fla. – Defense attorneys Phillip and Josephine Arroyo say their law firm is now handling more cases involving legal immigrants facing deportation.
One of them is Jeniffer Rodriguez Jimenez, whom the Arroyos say spent more than two months in a Texas deportation facility after being arrested in late March in Osceola County, accused of a misdemeanor that’s long since been dropped.
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“It’s been an extremely traumatic experience for the family, for her being held longer than the criminal charge requires,” Josephine Arroyo said, adding Jimenez had a valid driver’s license which was submitted to the prosecutor. “The whole case got dismissed. ICE still decided to ship her and take her over to Texas.”
Documents provided by the Arroyos show the case dismissal and an immigration bond set at $6,000. Jimenez is now back home with her family, but the attorneys say it didn’t come without a fight or without raising concern.
“ICE was not responding to our requests. We even went to the ICE office,” Josephine Arroyo explained. “They said, ‘You’re gonna have to deal with this through the courts because we don’t have discretion.’”
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“I think it’s very important to clarify the misunderstanding or misinformation that our beloved U.S. Constitution does not apply to immigrants,” Phillip Arroyo said. “If we read the text of the U.S. Constitution, it is very clear: nowhere does it say — when it comes to equal protection — nowhere does it say only citizens are protected. It says ‘persons,’ and that’s the beautiful thing about our founding fathers, who actually embraced immigration."
At a news conference Thursday morning in Orlando, Phillip Arroyo translated the testimony of one of Jimenez’s relatives who described Jimenez’s arrest.
“He stated that there was a misunderstanding in terms of the driver’s license. They took the necessary steps to show that she had a valid driver’s license, she was taken into custody and at one point when he took steps to intervene and speak with law enforcement and ICE, they were actually threatened and told that if they didn’t want to get deported as well, if they kept on seeking more information, that’s what’s going to happen to them,” Phillip Arroyo said.
Phillip Arroyo said his law firm got the case on April 10. Despite how the case was “immediately” dropped through the office of the Orange-Osceola County state attorney, he said that Jimenez was still sent away to Texas.
“ICE didn’t care. They kept her at the Osceola County Jail, then they transported her to Texas, where she remained until her release, which was June 3. So approximately two and a half months, maybe, she was separated from her family, and you can just imagine the suffering that that they’ve gone through, but thank the good Lord, they are back, they are safe," Phillip Arroyo said.
Josephine Arroyo told us ahead of the news conference that ICE’s enforcement priorities have shifted to targeting legal documented immigrants like Jimenez.
During the event, Phillip Arroyo expounded on the theory, claiming ICE’s actions could be described as racial profiling.
“She currently has an active asylum process, which was actually active. She had a social security card, she had a valid DL, she had a work permit, she had all her papers in place and I think it’s very important to highlight and call out this misinformation that’s out there, that all immigrants who are being held in ICE detention are somehow criminals,“ he said. ”(...) It’s quite honestly racial profiling. If you look Hispanic, you’re going to get pulled over; if you don’t have a valid DL, they’ll arrest you, and guess what? You get an ICE detainer when you get to the jail."
The Arroyos said that they were seeing a signifigant increase in ICE detainers in Orange and Osceola counties, stressing that those picked up by immigration officials should get their criminal cases handled before posting bond.
“We’ve been doing criminal defense for years and for cases of no valid driver’s license, we were never seeing ICE holds. We were not seeing ICE holds for individuals who had pending immigration processes. We were seeing ICE holds on, you know, aggravated felonies, violent crimes and undocumented, so violent and undocumented, but we have had clients in the past that were undocumented with no valid driver’s license and they were not getting detained,” Josephine Arroyo said.
Watch Thursday’s news conference again in the video player below or by clicking here.