US judge rules ICE illegally detained man whose daughter is battling cancer | US immigration
A federal judge has ruled that immigration authorities’ detention by immigration authorities of a Chicago man whose 16-year-old daughter is being treated for advanced cancer is unlawful and a hearing must be held by Oct. 31.
Lawyers for Ruben Torres Maldonado, 40, who was detained on October 18, filed a petition for his release while his deportation case goes through the system. While U.S. district judge Jeremy Daniel said in his order Friday that Torres’ detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was illegal and violated his due process rights, he also said he could not order Torres’ immediate release.
“While we sympathize with the plight of the plaintiff’s daughter due to her health issues, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant laws, rules and precedents,” the judge wrote on Friday. he wrote.
Torres’ lawyer considered the decision a win for now.
“We are pleased that the judge ruled in our favor, ruling that ICE unlawfully detained Ruben. We will now turn the fight to immigration court to ensure Ruben is released on bail while he applies for permanent resident status,” his attorney, Kalman Resnick, said in a statement Friday night.
Torres, a painter and home remodeler, was taken into custody at a suburban Home Depot store. Her daughter, Ofelia Torres, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive soft tissue cancer called metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma in December and is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
According to his lawyers, Torres entered the United States in 2003. He and his partner, Sandibell Hidalgo, also have a four-year-old son. The children are both U.S. citizens, according to court records.
“My father, like many other fathers, is a hard-working person who wakes up early in the morning and goes to work without complaining, thinking about his family,” Ofelia said in a video posted on the GoFundMe page for her family. “I find it very unfair that hard-working immigrant families are targeted just because they were not born here.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleges that Torres has been living in the United States illegally for years and has a history of driving offenses, including driving without a valid license, driving without insurance, and speeding.
“This is nothing more than a desperate Hail Mary attempt to keep a criminal illegal alien in our country,” Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “The Trump administration is fighting for the rule of law and the American people.”
At the hearing on Thursday, where Ofelia attended in a wheelchair, the family’s lawyers told the judge that Ofelia’s father was released from the hospital to see family and friends just a day before his arrest. But they said he had been unable to continue treatment “due to stress and disruption” since his arrest.
Federal prosecutor Craig Oswald told the court that the government did not want Torres released because he did not cooperate during his arrest.
Several elected officials held a news conference Wednesday to protest Torres’ arrest. The Chicago area is at the center of a massive immigration crackdown called Operation Midway Blitz, which began in early September.
