New Bedford man arrested by ICE remains detained after another judge rules against his release
Separately, Ryan Sullivan, another attorney representing Méndez, had filed a habeas petition in April arguing the legality of Méndez's detention at the Strafford County House of Corrections in Dover, N.H., where he is currently being held.
In that civil case, Judge Joseph N. Laplante had previously
Méndez, 29, originally from Guatemala, was violently detained in New Bedford last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who broke his car window using an ax, and then pulled him and his wife, Marilu Domingo Ortiz, out of the vehicle.
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Ortiz, who was granted asylum and was helping her husband adjust his immigration status,
Méndez does not have a criminal record and provided his fingerprints to US Citizenship and Immigration Services in December, according to his attorneys.
Still, Laplante denied the order for emergency release Friday afternoon.
Sullivan said his client was heartbroken to learn he was not going home at last.
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'He's understandably upset,' Sullivan said. 'The government's playing games with his liberty, but [Méndez] is fortunate in that he's got fantastic family support.'
Officials with the US Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Currently, Méndez has an immigration court hearing scheduled for May 15 that Judge Ostrom kept open exactly in the case of administrative hurdles like this.
So far, President Trump's administration has targeted large swaths of New England's immigrant community.
Over the last month, more than a hundred international students and scholars from over a dozen universities and colleges have been stripped of their visas.
In New Bedford, local residents took to the streets on May 1, also known as International Workers' Day, protesting against immigration raids that have targeted and removed at least a dozen local workers, many of whom do not have criminal records.
And across Massachusetts, federal immigration officials have arrested an estimated 370 people living in the US without proper documentation, with more raids expected
Sullivan said the latest response from Judge Laplante is disappointing, but he will continue the fight.
'We're paving new ground here … we used to be able to rely on the government not violating the due process rights of the people within the borders of our country,' he said.
'That's just not the world that we live in anymore.'
Esmy Jimenez can be reached at
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