After Community Push, Square Diner Server Will Be Released Following Two-Month ICE Detainment
Luis Fernandez, a longtime server at Tribeca's Square Diner, is expected to go home within a day after a judge ordered his release from ICE custody on Monday, August 11. The decision follows weeks of organizing by neighbors, regulars, and coworkers who believe the arrest never should have happened.
Fernandez, originally from Ecuador, has lived in New York for over 35 years and has green-card status; he currently lives in Queens, is married, and has two children. For over seven years, he has been a familiar face behind the counter at the 100-year-old Square Diner (33 Leonard Street, at Varick Street), until he was detained on June 24 after checking in on his pending asylum application on Long Island. ICE confirmed the arrest in a statement to the Tribeca Citizen in July.
After Fernandez, 50, was detained in late June, according to the Tribeca Tribune, he went from 26 Federal Plaza to New Jersey to Maryland and finally to the IAH Polk Adult Detention Facility in Livingston, Texas. In the NYC facility, Fernandez says he was fed a bagel, a bottle of water, and a chocolate chip cookie each day, according to colleagues who kept in touch.
From the start, the community moved quickly to rally behind him. Kris Brown, a 25-year Tribeca resident who lives on the same block as the Square Diner, wrote a letter to ICE shortly after Fernandez was detained. 'After sharing [it] with a neighbor and friend, Winsome Brown [no relation], she posted it on her Instagram account, which went viral within a few days [and got] almost 200,000 views,' Brown tells Eater over email.
That attention, Brown says, 'led to additional attention to Luis's situation, outreach by the local Tribeca press … [and] a reach-out by my neighbor and a fellow lawyer Claude Millman, who I helped put in touch with Luis's friend and Square Diner coworker Irma Fernando.'
Through Fernando, Brown was connected with Fernandez's daughter Liset, and helped coordinate with the legal team ahead of a July 30 virtual status hearing. In the interim, 'We were able to be in touch with Luis via Liset to impress upon him the need to ask for a bond hearing … and to let the judge know that he was represented by counsel and had the money to post a bond, as well as remind the judge that he had a previously scheduled amnesty application pending,' say Brown.
Tribeca Citizen reports that, at Monday's bond hearing in Livingston, Texas, senior attorney Carl Relles represented Fernandez, after first-year associate Pam Rosero prepared the motion and supporting documents.
A GoFundMe campaign organized by Fernando with help from Brown and Millman raised more than $21,000 — enough to cover Fernandez's $5,000 bond, legal fees, and other expenses, according to Tribeca Citizen. The bond amount was lower than the $10,000 figure that's typical in similar cases.
Nationwide, according to a study from the Center for Migration Studies released in 2024, as many as 8.3 million undocumented immigrants work in the U.S. economy, representing 5.2 percent of the workforce. Of those, around a million people or more work in restaurants.
For many in the neighborhood, Fernandez's release is a win not just for him, but for a tight-knit community that refused to stand by. 'While Luis's record is not perfect,' Brown says, 'his transgressions occurred long ago, and since then, he has been an outstanding neighbor, worker, and father.'
In addition, Fernandez's next court date related to his previously scheduled amnesty application is scheduled for January 30, 2026. Until then, regulars are looking forward to having him back pouring coffee and trading stories at the Square Diner's counter — the same spot where his neighbors first rallied to bring him home.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
7 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Crackdown Snares More Migrants With No US Criminal Records
President Donald Trump, who has vowed to target the 'worst of the worst' in his mass deportation campaign, is overseeing a crackdown that's increasingly ensnaring foreigners without US criminal records. About 37% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in July were of people with no US criminal convictions or pending charges, according to federal data compiled by the University of California at Berkeley 's Deportation Data Project and updated this week. That's up from 13% in December, the last full month of Joe Biden's presidency.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Trump Is Having Trouble Prosecuting His Enemies
In November 2017, less than a year into his first term as president, Donald Trump publicly confronted a depressing reality. The traditions of Justice Department independence, he lamented in a radio interview, limited his ability to order an investigation of Hillary Clinton. It was 'the saddest thing,' he said. 'I'm not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing, and I am very frustrated by it.' This time around, Trump is not similarly encumbered. During the interregnum between his terms, MAGA's would-be philosophers built out the intellectual architecture for a presidential takeover of the Justice Department. Once Trump was back in office, the new administration set about filling DOJ leadership with loyalists and firing anyone who might object to abuses of power. The president, insistent that he was the victim of persecution by federal law enforcement, now seeks to turn the same apparatus against his enemies. In a representative Truth Social post last month, he shared an AI-generated video of Barack Obama being handcuffed by FBI agents and dragged out of the Oval Office. But Trump's plan to leverage the DOJ for his campaign of revenge is not generating the results he might have hoped for, and not just because Obama remains a free man. The Justice Department has been slow to move forward with the investigations Trump demanded, hemmed in by the constraints of the legal system. Federal prosecutors targeting protesters and Democratic politicians have been dealt embarrassing defeats. American criminal law appears to be a less flexible tool in the hands of an authoritarian than Trump hoped—at least for now. Attorney General Pam Bondi identified herself right away as an enthusiastic participant in the president's personal-retribution project, launching a 'Weaponization Working Group' in February that would examine past investigations of Trump. In recent weeks, the department appears to have moved toward a potential criminal investigation of officials involved in the 2016 probe of Russian election interference. Outside the Justice Department, the Office of Special Counsel has opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the former special counsel who, from 2022 to 2024, oversaw the two federal criminal prosecutions of Trump for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which restricts political activities by government employees. (Despite its name, the Office of Special Counsel is an independent agency with no relationship to Smith's old shop.) Jonathan Chait: Trump's desperate move to quiet the Epstein scandal This is one model of law enforcement as a weapon: specific targeting of preexisting villains. Around the country, meanwhile, federal prosecutors handpicked by Trump are experimenting with another: cracking down on dissent. Anti-ICE protesters, and even Democratic elected officials pushing for oversight of immigration enforcement, have faced criminal charges. Attorney General Robert Jackson famously warned in 1940 that the federal prosecutor 'has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.' Still, prosecutorial authority has limits. A prosecutor has to find a crime to charge in the first place. If the offense is serious enough, the prosecutor must also be able to persuade a grand jury to issue an indictment. And if the defendant refuses to plead guilty, the prosecutor must persuade a petit jury to convict. These are far from insurmountable barriers; on the contrary, as criminal-justice reformers have long argued, the deck is stacked in favor of the prosecution. But the Trump administration keeps tripping up on them anyway. After June protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles, the office of Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli filed more than 35 felony prosecutions, mostly for alleged assault of federal officers. But the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg report that prosecutors were unable to persuade a grand jury to indict in several cases, as is required for felony charges. Court records show that in the weeks following the protests, the office moved to dismiss at least eight cases and downgraded another five to misdemeanors. (In one instance, the office charged a case as a felony, dropped it to a misdemeanor, and then recharged it as a felony a month and a half later, this time with an indictment in hand. Prosecutors have secured indictments in at least 12 cases, though two of those were later dismissed and a third indictment originally identified the defendant by the wrong name.) For context, in 2016, the last year for which data are available, the Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded only six refusals by grand juries out of roughly 180,000 cases pursued by federal prosecutors around the country. In more ordinary times, the old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich is not far off. On the opposite coast, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey has dealt with an embarrassment of its own. The office's interim leader, Alina Habba (until recently one of Trump's personal lawyers), filed trespassing charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka after he attempted to visit an ICE detention facility in his city. 'NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,' Habba trumpeted on X. Two weeks later, however, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges. The magistrate judge handling the case chastened the office over its failure to 'thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power.' (Baraka, sitting in the courtroom during the hearing, was overheard commenting afterward, 'Jesus, he tore these people a new asshole.') Bondi, meanwhile, is struggling to respond to the president's demands to prosecute people involved in perpetrating what Trump calls the 'Russia hoax.' The biggest challenge there is that there was no hoax; as both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a bipartisan Senate intelligence report concluded, Russia really did try to help Trump win the 2016 election. For that matter, even if the Justice Department could somehow identify a crime, any number of legal issues could trip up a prosecution—including the fact that the conduct in question took place almost 10 years ago, well past the typical five-year window for charging an offense. According to The New York Times, the attorney general was caught unawares by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's release of documents from 2016, and displeased about the political pressure from the right to launch an investigation in response. Despite an exciting headline from Fox News—'DOJ Launching Grand Jury Investigation Into Russiagate Conspiracy Allegations'—all Bondi appears to have done is ask prosecutors to possibly present grand jurors with evidence. When a grand jury will actually convene, and indeed whether it ever will, is not clear. Bondi's hedging on Russia hints at a broader awareness within the Justice Department that securing indictments, much less guilty verdicts, may be a problem. In May, Ed Martin, the crusading Trump supporter who is now leading the Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group, suggested that if the department were unable to charge 'bad actors' with crimes, it would settle for naming and shaming them publicly. (This would be a departure from long-running department policy, which holds that 'no legitimate governmental interest' is served by publicly voicing allegations against individuals without an accompanying criminal case.) Similarly, the investigation of Jack Smith might be a tacit admission of how little the administration has to go on here: The harshest penalty that the Office of Special Counsel could demand would be Smith's dismissal from government service, but he has already resigned. Shane Harris: The 'Russia hoax,' revisited These challenges are similar to ones that Trump ran into during his first term. In fact, the FBI's 2016 election-interference investigation was already the subject of an investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, which began in 2019. Despite MAGA hype, Durham's probe was a flop: He brought three criminal cases concerning alleged wrongdoing around the Russia investigation, two of which ended in acquittals by juries. (A third led to a former FBI lawyer being sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to having altered an email.) And a shaky criminal probe into former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, whom Trump had seized on as a symbol of the nefarious 'deep state,' quietly ground to a halt without charges being filed. It's difficult to say exactly what happened in the McCabe case because of strict rules around grand-jury secrecy, but one possibility is that jurors declined to issue an indictment. Still, the jury system will not always act as a defense against abuses. The same day that Baraka's case was dismissed, Habba announced her intent to indict Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver for 'forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers' when attempting to shield Baraka from arrest. A grand jury returned the indictment. McIver has pleaded not guilty, but others might make different calculations: The overwhelming majority of criminal cases end with plea deals, because defendants decide against taking their chances in court. Meanwhile, the Justice Department recently sent out grand-jury subpoenas targeting New York Attorney General Letitia James over investigations by her office into Trump and the National Rifle Association. Fox News reports that another investigation may be under way into Trump's claims of supposed mortgage fraud by James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff. Even if the harassment of James and Schiff goes nowhere, criminal investigations like these can be a grueling experience for the defendant, especially given the enormous cost of paying for a defense lawyer. A jury is in essence a democratic institution, requiring citizens to exercise their judgment in a model of shared deliberation that is at odds with Trump's autocratic tendencies. In the colonial era, grand juries sometimes refused to indict protesters against the Crown; in the decades before the Civil War, both grand and petit juries nullified prosecutions under the Fugitive Slave Act. Yet although the American jury system can be a powerful tool in the fight for self-government, it has not always been a reliable one. Juries also helped build the foundations of the Jim Crow South by shielding white Southerners from legal accountability for racial terror. So far, the system has held up against Trump's encroachment. But the rapid erosion of democratic life in the United States over the past six months is a reminder of how quickly things can change.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Green Card Holder Detained in Texas Begs ICE to Deport Him
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A green card holder has asked to be deported from the United States, saying he is suffering chronic pain in a Texas immigration detention center where he has allegedly not received treatment for his sickle cell disease, according to the Houston Chronicle. Deon Lewis, 43, has been a legal permanent resident since 1993, the outlet reported. He was born with a medical condition that affects blood flow, can cause significant pain, and may lead to organ damage or stroke. "It's only a matter of time before something really bad happens to me," he told the Houston Chronicle. "Why haven't I been deported yet? I've been begging these people to deport me." A member of his legal team has even highlighted his criminal record in a bid to secure speedy deportation so that he can be treated. Newsweek has contacted the family via GoFundMe and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment via email. Deon Lewis, 43, has been a legal permanent resident since 1993, the Houston Chronicle reported. He was born with a medical condition that affects blood flow, can cause significant pain, and may lead to organ... Deon Lewis, 43, has been a legal permanent resident since 1993, the Houston Chronicle reported. He was born with a medical condition that affects blood flow, can cause significant pain, and may lead to organ damage or stroke. More GoFundMe Why It Matters President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to remove millions of undocumented migrants as he looks to fulfill his campaign pledge of widespread mass deportations. In addition to people living in the country without legal status, immigrants with valid documentation, including green cards and visas, have been detained. Immigration authorities have been under increased scrutiny amid allegations of misconduct, with the agency at the center of the national debate over immigration policy. Concerns have been raised over the legality and human impact of ICE's enforcement practices. What To Know Lewis has undergone lung surgery and previously had access to medication that supported his daily functioning, the Houston Chronicle reported. Lewis has been held in Houston since June 30, following a prior detention in Louisiana, according to the outlet. His attorneys told the outlet he has been denied medication in Texas and has fainted due to the pain caused by his condition. In mid-July, he agreed to a stipulated removal order, waiving his right to appeal or seek judicial review, as his main goal is simply to be released, according to the Houston Chronicle. Lewis has a criminal history dating back to 2002, when he was arrested for cocaine possession, pleaded guilty, and received probation, according to the Houston Chronicle. In 2020, he was arrested again on charges of possessing marijuana and cocaine, as well as carrying a firearm. "I've been in this country since I was 11 years old. Yeah, I did something wrong," he said. "Since then, I went on to start my own business. I've got five children that I take care of. I've never been on child support for any of them," he told the outlet. A spokesperson for ICE said in a statement: "He is the definition of a threat to public safety and will remain in ICE custody until his removal can be carried out." Lewis said that he and his wife, Roxanne Lewis, had offered to cover his travel costs themselves to help get him out of the country. "And that's without me even knowing what I'm going into. I just want to get out of here so I can get medical attention," Lewis said. What People Are Saying Roxanne wrote in a post on GoFundMe: "Deon is an asset to his community and has been for over 30 years in the United States. He is a business owner. Providing jobs and transportation to the public. Please help Deon to be released and free from this horrible situation which has affected, devastated, destroying all of us so much." Rina Gandhi, an attorney on Lewis' team, told the Houston Chronicle: "He's not fighting or disputing removal — he's trying to leave due to his severe health concerns and everyone agrees to his removal. So why is he still here? His rap sheet shouldn't matter. If anything, it should speed things up." What Happens Next Lewis will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
