Judicial Panel Denies Release For Immigrant Jailed Since June
Jaciel Cirrus Rojas was arrested and is still in Dodge County Jail.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Public Domain).
The federal government will continue holding an immigrant in Dodge County Jail, where he has been indefinitely detained for the past seven months, after a recent decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with no criminal history, was arrested on June 3 last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. He has spent the past seven months in immigration detention in Dodge County as his case winds through the courts. He has lived in the U.S. since 2018. He has family here and a 1-year-old daughter.
Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin have been working to free Cirrus Rojas, arguing the federal government is unlawfully detaining him, violating his due process rights and disrupting his ability to prepare for an asylum claim. Previous attempts to secure his release have been denied by an immigration court and a federal court. Attorneys have appealed his case to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and have asked the court to release him pending the outcome of his case.
On Monday, a judicial panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion for Cirrus Rojas’ release pending the outcome of his appeal. As a result, he will remain in immigration detention throughout his appeal, which will likely take months.
“We are devastated that Mr. Cirrus Rojas will continue to remain incarcerated and separated from his family after more than six months of detention. Although this is not the result we had hoped for, we continue to believe that the government’s systematic refusal to grant bond hearings to individuals like our client violates the law. We will continue to fight on behalf of our client and for the legal rights that are guaranteed to all of us,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a statement to Urban Milwaukee.
The decision of the three-member motions panel, however, was not unanimous. Judge Diane Sykes, appointed by former President George W. Bush and a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, and Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, appointed by President Joe Biden, supported denying release. Judge Joshua P. Kolar, also a Biden appointee, dissented.
The indefinite detention of Cirrus Rojas is another example of the shifting legal strategies being deployed by the Trump administration as it carries out a policy of mass deportation.
After his arrest in June, Cirrus Rojas was initially granted release on bond by an immigration judge. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quickly appealed the decision, arguing an interpretation of federal immigration law that treats immigrants living in the interior of the country the same as immigrants detained while crossing the border. The order granting bond was vacated, and Cirrus Rojas has remained in detention in Dodge County.
ACLU attorneys filed a petition for habeus corpus in U.S. District Court, challenging the federal government to defend the legality of the detention. U.S. District Court Judge Brett Ludwig denied his release, noting that while federal immigration law in question is “complicated” he ultimately thought DHS had “the better of the statutory argument.”
His attorneys have argued the order goes against previous court decisions in similar cases across the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At issue is an interpretation of federal immigration law governing mandatory detention. DHS argues this law should apply to all immigrants who entered the country unlawfully, not just immigrants arrested at the border.
Cirrus Rojas has filed an asylum claim under a law protecting people who may be tortured if they are deported to their home country. His asylum case has faced delays as the courts struggled to find an interpreter who speaks Chatino, an Indigenous language spoken in Oaxaca. He speaks Spanish, but it is not his first language. On top of the language barrier, his ACLU attorneys say his ongoing detention is preventing him from adequately preparing for his asylum case.
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