SANTA CRUZ — An Irish-born Live Oak resident and valid green card holder remains in legal limbo more than a week after she was detained by federal immigration authorities after a trip abroad.
Family of Cliona Ward, 54, told the Sentinel that the Santa Cruz County resident of more than three decades is yet to be fully processed in the immigration courts system and, therefore, is yet to be assigned a hearing date so she can plead her case before a federal judge. Ward and her family previously believed she’d have a hearing as soon as May 7, but that all changed after getting clarity from recently retained legal counsel.
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“She could be looking at being in there for months,” Ward’s sister, Orla Holladay, said Monday. “When I have been able to speak to her, she’s terrified.”
Ward is currently being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Tacoma, Washington, according to the agency’s online locator. She was moved there April 24 after being held for four days prior to that at San Francisco International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Holladay said communication with her sister has been challenging, but when they have been able to speak over the phone, Ward described harsh and uncomfortable living conditions. Ward reported that the water was undrinkable and that the food tasted awful and that she was afraid to eat it. She also told her sister that she’s been confined with several other women that are also navigating the detention process and were similarly panicked.
“She said most of them are non-English speakers, but that there are a lot of tears and a lot of hugs,” said Holladay, adding that her sister was able to see some in-person visitors recently from the Irish Consulate.
Federal immigration officials first stopped Ward in late March as she was returning to Santa Cruz after escorting her stepmother to see her dying father in Ireland. Holladay said the officials latched onto two 20-year-old drug possession charges that Ward, who previously struggled with addiction issues but is now 20 years sober, was able to expunge and vacate from her record. However, the record was cleared by a state judge and now the immigration officials are requiring that a federal judge take a look, according to Holladay.
“She went through an extensive rehabilitation with Santa Cruz County to get all of these things put behind her and vacated,” said Holladay. “She had some struggles with addiction, and she got picked up with drugs that were not for an intent to sell, and she had those all vacated.”
Now, according to a GoFundMe page that Holladay set up to bring awareness to her sister’s situation and raise money for legal fees, Ward is facing threats of potential deportation by federal immigration authorities.
“Despite having fully complied with the law, making reparations, maintaining a clean record ever since, working full-time, paying taxes and raising a family — including caring for her chronically ill son — Cliona was instead taken into custody at what was supposed to be a routine meeting,” Holladay wrote on the public page.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to the Sentinel’s request for comment by print time Tuesday.
News of Ward’s case has attracted attention across the globe and from a number of public officials at local, state and federal levels. U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta fiercely defended Ward in a statement last week and called her detention “unfathomable and unacceptable.”
Panetta posted on his social media page Tuesday that Ward’s detainment and potential deportation based on 20-year-old charges is “misguided and unacceptable,” adding that, “We are working with her legal team, and I continue to push for her release and due process.”
Jenny Ballesteros is a lead staff attorney and equal justice work fellow with the Santa Cruz County Immigration Project. Though she is not privy to the specifics of Ward’s case, Ballesteros told the Sentinel that as it relates to immigration issues in general, state expungements of criminal records are often not enough to satisfy federal requirements.
“It’s actually something we see (with) a lot of our clients,” said Ballesteros. “A lot of people end up getting expungements thinking they’re good, but in reality they got the wrong type of relief.”
Instead, she added, something known as “post-conviction relief” must be granted to prevent immigration status impacts. A defendant might seek this kind of relief, Ballesteros explained, if they were not adequately notified by a judge at the time of their conviction about the consequences the ruling could have on their immigration status in the future.
“The federal judge I’m assuming, yes, they do want to see what the expungements were for and if they qualify to get rid of those convictions for immigration purposes,” said Ballesteros. “If (the convictions) are for drug possession, most likely they had to get the post-conviction relief, not just a simple state expungement.”
Ward was originally detained March 19-21 in Seattle and, upon her release, was told to report back to customs in San Francisco with requested paperwork about her past. But upon arriving, she was detained again and has remained in custody ever since. Ward first moved to the U.S. when she was 12 years old and came to the county at 18 years old to attend UC Santa Cruz.
The Sentinel confirmed that Ward has retained representation in Washington with Seattle-based Global Justice Law Group PLLC. But her attorney said she is still in the investigation stage at this point and is awaiting requested documents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As of Tuesday, her lawyer was not yet ready to share information with the press, including requested documentation of Ward’s legal history.
In the meantime, Holladay has continued to post almost daily updates about her sister’s status on the GoFundMe page she created.
“Cliona is a taxpayer, she is a legal resident of this country who had just updated her green card,” said Holladay. “She is a valuable member of the community.”