ICE field director: Plaintiff in ACLU suit would not have been detained
Boston’s acting ICE field director testified in federal court yesterday that illegal immigrant Lilian Calderon — the plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit — would not have been detained if her case had been further investigated.
Todd Michael Lyons, the current acting field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Boston agreed with U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf that Calderon, a Guatemalan citizen who was detained by ICE in January, was not a “flight risk” as she has a family and a home in Massachusetts.
“If someone isn’t a flight risk, why would get they locked up?” Wolf said.
“If she had filed an I-212, she wouldn’t have been separated from her family,” Lyons said, referring to one of several documents needed to obtain temporary legal status.
“The process is convoluted,” Lyons acknowledged.
Calderon was detained in January when she went to apply for permanent legal residency, despite having U.S.-born children and a husband who is a U.S. citizen. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which brought on the class-action lawsuit, claims that Calderon and other immigrants in her situation should be granted temporary relief while they are working to obtain legal status.
Wolf heard arguments from Calderon and ICE employees yesterday.
Wolf is expected to decide tomorrow if ICE agents seeking to deport illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens should be required to first take into account whether they have begun the process of applying for a green card.
Lyons says that detentions of illegal immigrants who are involved in criminal cases or may pose a threat to public safety or national security are given top priority, and investigated on a case-by-case basis. However, Lyons acknowledged that didn’t apply in Calderon’s case.