An Anchorage restaurant worker who was detained by federal immigration officials in August has been released after a judge’s ruling in a class action lawsuit.
ICE arrested Santiago Martinez, a 30-year-old Mexican national seeking asylum in the U.S., on Aug. 11 outside the sushi restaurant where he worked and sent him to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Martinez is one of at least 56 people detained by ICE in Alaska this year, according to the state Department of Corrections, which jails detainees under a contract with the federal government.
Immigration judges in Seattle were refusing to let detainees like Martinez out on bond, said Margaret Stock, Martinez’s lawyer. A legal advocacy group called the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project filed a class action suit against the Seattle ICE field office, she said.
“They won their case, and they got an order from a federal judge saying that people cannot be detained, that their detention is unlawful,” Stock said.
U.S. District Court Judge for Western Washington Tiffany Cartwright issued a temporary restraining order, or TRO, requiring that Martinez be released. He officially left ICE custody on Tuesday.
There’ve been similar rulings across the country in recent months, but that doesn’t mean every detainee is being released, Stock said.
“The class action covers hundreds of people, but people have to assert their status as a class member somehow,” Stock said. “And because Santiago had an attorney, me, I was able to assert his membership in the class and work with the lawyers to get the TRO issued. People who don't have an attorney, it's very difficult for them to deal with this situation.”
A regional ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stock said she’s concerned over the high number of immigration detentions during Trump’s second presidency. The Department of Homeland Security is acting unlawfully and misrepresenting who’s being detained, she said.
“Although DHS claims they're only arresting criminals, that's not the case,” Stock said. “They're going after mostly people that are not criminals. They're going after people who are legally in the country, doing things that are perfectly legal, working legally.”
Stock said she plans to continue helping Martinez apply for asylum, now that he’s been released from detention.
Martinez returned to Alaska Thursday night. His boss said he’s set to return to work Saturday.
This story previously misnamed the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project. It has been corrected.
