A federal judge’s decision to release an Ecuadorian woman detained by ICE during a raid of her South Burlington home last week signaled deep skepticism about a key plank of the government’s immigration crackdown.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated Johana Patin Patin’s constitutional rights when it detained her during a raid at her South Burlington residence last week, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford wrote Tuesday.
Crawford had already released Patin Patin from ICE custody at a hearing on Monday, commenting that her case was “not really contestable.”
But in a written order elaborating on that decision, the judge went a step further to make clear that he believes ICE violated the Constitution by removing Patin Patin from her home for “no legitimate governmental purpose.”
Specifically, he ruled that ICE hadn’t upheld her right to due process. The agents simply apprehended her under the Trump administration’s argument that it can legally detain millions of noncitizens living in the U.S. — even those who, like Patin Patin, have a pending asylum claim — without showing that they are dangerous or likely to abscond.
Vermont civil rights litigator Jay Diaz said Crawford’s ruling “showed that this case deserves an extraordinary remedy.”
Crawford’s decision to release Patin Patin immediately, rather than order a separate bond hearing in immigration court, likely spared her several days in prison, away from her husband and two young children.
It also sends a message, some immigration and civil rights attorneys say, that the courts here are willing to intervene in cases where ICE arrests immigrants simply because of their immigration status.
“I am cautiously optimistic,” said Brett Stokes, director of Vermont Law School’s Center for Justice Reform Clinic.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
Crawford wrote that Patin Patin was “caught in the Government’s net” not because she had done anything wrong, but because she was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The longer that immigrants like Ms. Patin Patin must wait to regain their freedom,” Crawford wrote, “the more effective the Government's policy of mass detention becomes in sowing fear and convincing immigrants with meritorious cases to abandon their pursuit of legal status in this country.”
In Patin Patin’s case, ICE agents claimed they were looking for another man who they believed was inside her residence on Dorset Street. After pushing through rows of activists and battering down the door, they did not find the man inside.
Instead, Patin Patin asserted in a court filing, an agent asked in Spanish if she and her sister had “papers.” “We said that we are in the process, and he said ‘OK then you are coming with us,’” she said in the filing, which was transcribed by her attorney with the help of an interpreter.
The sisters were first taken to a state prison, then put into what Patin Patin described as a large truck equipped with “metal cages” like those used for dogs. She rode handcuffed in the truck for several hours before agents turned around and brought her back to jail, she said.
Her attorney, Kristen Connors, said in an interview that she worried ICE might be moving her out of state. It’s why she scrambled last week to file a petition asking the judge to keep her in Vermont until a hearing on her request for release.
Connors said she was surprised that Crawford had addressed Patin Patin’s constitutional protections, not just the rules of immigration law. She thinks it could lead to quicker relief for other immigrants who are arrested under similar circumstances.
“This is a really good decision for people who, as Judge Crawford said, are in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Connors said.
The ruling did not create a binding precedent, however. And the day after Patin Patin’s release, a different judge in the same federal courthouse opted against releasing a Honduran man who was detained during the same raid. In that case, District Judge William K. Sessions III ordered a separate bond hearing because he lacked clarity around Christian Humberto Jerez Andrade’s criminal record. Unlike the Patin Patin sisters, Jerez Andrade did not have a pending asylum claim.
Still, Stokes, of Vermont Law School, said Patin Patin’s apprehension wasn’t all that unusual, despite the chaotic confrontation between activists and ICE agents that surrounded it.
“This case really does seem to me to be very similar to, I would say, a majority of immigration arrests that are occurring throughout the United States right now,” he said.
