Last month, immigration attorneys at a Central Texas nonprofit got a phone call that stood out to them, even amid a nationwide immigration crackdown.
A 19-year-old woman who'd been living in Austin was calling from a South Texas immigration detention center. She had been there nearly six weeks, separated from her 8-month-old baby boy, who she left in the custody of a friend after she was arrested and later apprehended by immigration officials.
She was desperate to reunite with her son and continue breastfeeding him. And she needed a breast pump. Her breasts were painfully swollen with excess milk, and she didn't want her supply to drop.
"Why are they detaining someone who's nursing and postpartum?" said Elisa Jelley, an attorney for the nonprofit American Gateways. "I feel that people in the United States shouldn't be treated that way by our government. And it really made me want to help and get her out as soon as possible."
Jelley and her colleagues expected to engage in a protracted legal fight in their attempt to help the woman, who goes by Patricia and is from Honduras. She said she fled her home country two years ago after she was raped by a gang member who continued to harass her. The Texas Newsroom is not naming Patricia because she says she is a victim of sexual assault and domestic violence.
But on Monday — just over two weeks after American Gateways lawyers sued the government seeking her release — a federal judge in San Antonio ruled in their favor and ordered the government to release Patricia within two days. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers released her on Tuesday.
Federal judge is quick to order young mother's release
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia wrote that the government violated the constitution by detaining Patricia without a hearing. Garcia also disagreed with ICE's argument that he should wait for guidance from the appellate courts before deciding on her case and that of hundreds of other migrants seeking release from detention across Central and West Texas.
Such cases "must not be allowed to founder in a procedural morass," wrote Garcia, a former Texas lawmaker who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton.
Danny Woodward, an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the decision was especially notable because it happened so quickly after Patricia's attorneys filed the lawsuit. "Judges are overwhelmed" with such cases, he said, adding that he was "really heartened that the judge did recognize the urgency of the case and acted quickly on it."
A 911 call for help leads to apprehension by ICE
Patricia's case has also drawn the attention of local criminal justice advocates, who are concerned about why she ended up in ICE custody in the first place. It all started when she called Austin police in June, alleging that her boyfriend was abusing her. Police ended up charging her for assault instead and taking her to the Travis County Jail.
Prosecutors dismissed the case against Patricia a few weeks later, and ICE picked her up immediately afterward.
That would have been a rare occurrence in past years, when immigration authorities generally only targeted people with serious criminal convictions. But since President Trump was elected to a second term on the promise of mass deportations, ICE has been visiting Austin-area jails regularly in search of undocumented migrants.
"In the past, ICE would never detain a nursing mother with no criminal record," Austin City Council Member Chito Vela said.
ICE's own policy generally discourages the agency from arresting or detaining people who are pregnant, postpartum or nursing. But in this case, the agency argued in legal filings that Patricia's arrest for assault created "exceptional circumstances."
Erik Johnson, a spokesman for the city, defended Austin police's decision to arrest Patricia. He said police never alerted immigration authorities upon encountering her — something police came under intense scrutiny for earlier this year in a separate case. He added that Patricia's boyfriend accused her of assaulting him and that police deemed his account more credible.
"APD officers responded to a 9-1-1 report of an ongoing domestic disturbance, conducted an investigation upon arrival, evaluated statements and physical evidence, and made an arrest after establishing probable cause for a family violence assault offense," Johnson wrote in an email.
Johnson did not respond to a detailed list of follow-up questions about the incident. The Austin Police Department also did not respond to similar questions.
Patricia's immigration attorneys said she strongly disputes the police's account. She claims the man had been abusing her for months and she was terrified to speak to police when they arrived. The attorneys included a detailed counter-narrative of the incident in the federal lawsuit seeking her release from detention.
"Trauma impacts your memory. Trauma impacts your ability to trust people," said Maryn Rolfson Taylor, an immigration attorney at American Gateways who worked on the case. "She was failed by multiple systems here, not just the immigration system."
Michael Bullock, president of the Austin Police Association, said police do their best to encourage victims to talk and can often get a translator or multiple Spanish speakers on scene, but the resources aren't always available. He added that officers' options are limited in domestic violence situations.
"We don't have any discretion. We have to make an arrest," he said. "If someone has a scratch on them and they're saying it came from an altercation from another party, and the other party's not providing anything to refute it, we don't have a choice."
Deniz Kadirhan, a criminal defense lawyer who has represented many people facing domestic violence charges, said she wasn't surprised that Austin police ended up arresting Patricia. Their job is to establish probable cause that an offense occurred, and the man who was with her provided it.
"While this case has extraordinary consequences, the facts of the underlying arrest are not so far out of the realm of things that we see every day," said Kadirhan, who was not involved in the case but reviewed the APD incident report and the affidavit to prosecutors at The Texas Newsroom's request. "People are getting arrested under very similar circumstances every single day."
Following Patricia's release from ICE custody on Tuesday, she saw her baby for the first time in nearly three months. In a brief interview before their reunion, she said she was excited to see the signs of development she heard about from her friend who has been taking care of him, like his new teeth and his progress in learning how to crawl.
Patricia's path forward will be rocky. Last month, an immigration judge ordered her deportation. Her lawyers are now in the process of appealing the order, a process that could take more than a year, and are also assessing the best way for her to ultimately gain legal status in the U.S.
"This is an example of the cruelty and inefficiency of our immigration system," Rolfson Taylor said.
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