Federal judge won’t recommend release for Seattle-area Dreamer

SEATTLE — A federal magistrate judge weighed in for the second time Tuesday against immediately releasing Daniel Ramirez Medina, a Dreamer when he was arrested in Des Moines, Iowa, last month by immigration officers.

Yet the judge also decided in favor of keeping jurisdiction over the case rather than sending it to immigration court — “a landmark legal victory,” according to Mark Rosenbaum, one of Ramirez’s lawyers.

“It’s a signal to the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and to the immigration authorities that the courts are watching them,” Theodore Boutrous, also on Ramirez’s legal team, added in a conference call with reporters.

He and his colleagues said the decision will have an impact on how authorities approach the nearly 800,000 Dreamers throughout the country.

The Department of Justice had no comment beyond saying that it is reviewing the decision.

The 46-page document by Chief Magistrate Judge James Donohue amounts to recommendations, not an order. As a magistrate judge chosen for his post by other federal court judges, he must refer those recommendations to a federal judge appointed by the president, in this case Chief District Judge Ricardo Martinez.

The Mexican-born Ramirez, who turned 24 last week and has a young son, came to the U.S. as a child and received authorization to remain in the country legally under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

The circumstances of his arrest are vehemently contested. ICE agents said that while carrying out an arrest of his father, they ran across the young man and he admitted to being a gang member. Even though Ramirez has no criminal record, the admission invalidated his DACA authorization, the agents said.

But Ramirez and his lawyers insist the Dreamer never said he was involved with gangs. And they charge that his arrest, given that he is a DACA beneficiary, violated constitutional protections, including due process.

Immigration court, which is run by the Justice Department, normally handles deportation proceedings. Immigrants who lose in that court can appeal to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals. If they lose again, they can petition the regular federal court system through the appellate courts.

The government argued that Ramirez must follow that process, which is stipulated by Congress, even though immigration court does not generally hear constitutional issues. Those would only be heard in appellate court. That wasn’t acceptable, Donohue said in his recommendations, returning to a hypothetical issue he raised in a hearing last week: a roadblock set up by the government that would put all DACA recipients found into detention.