The fast-tracked deportation of three Guatemalan men who were detained during an immigration sweep outside a Home Depot in Pomona in April has been canceled, at least for now.
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Shortly before a scheduled hearing in U.S. District Court on Monday, May 19, the Department of Homeland Security canceled the expedited removal orders for Jesus Domingo-Ros, Edwin Roberto Juarez and Yoni Ronaldo Garcia, according to Niels W. Frenzen, a professor of law at the University of Southern California and the co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
The U.S. Border Patrol agents who had detained the three men on April 22 outside a Home Depot at 2707 S. Towne Ave. had previously been ordered to appear at an evidentiary hearing Thursday to explain the circumstances about how the men were detained and questioned.
“No reason was given by the government, but we would guess that the government decided it did not want to produce the arresting Border Patrol agents to testify in court under oath on Thursday to justify the legality of their actions,” Frenzen wrote in an email Monday afternoon.
The three men are in detention at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility, an ICE detention facility in Calexico, and the government is still seeking to deport them.
“ICE has now issued Notices to Appear (NTAs) for all of the men which places them in ‘regular’ removal proceedings before an immigration judge where they now have the right to be represented by a lawyer,” Frenzen wrote. The men are now eligible for bond, he added.
The men are currently scheduled to have an initial hearing before Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Anna Perry on Jan. 2 in Imperial Immigration Court.
Law students with the USC Immigration Clinic have been filing challenges to the three men’s detention. On Friday, May 16, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw had granted a temporary restraining order on the expedited deportation of Domingo-Ros, Juarez and Garcia, as he sought to clarify whether the men had been legally detained and if any evidence gained as a result was legally admissible.
Frenzen wants a guarantee that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement won’t re-impose expedited removal orders against the men, fast-tracking their deportation and sidestepping the normal process the accused go through in the U.S. legal system.
He cited a Jan. 23 memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman to ICE and Customs and Border Protection to exercise their “enforcement discretion” in pursuing expedited removal of non-citizens.
The USC Immigration Clinic and Department of Homeland Security now have until May 22 to work out an agreement in which the department will guarantee to not reimpose expedited removal.
Domingo-Ros, Juarez and Garcia were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents on April 22.
According to Sabraw’s temporary restraining order, earlier in the day, the agents had come to Pomona to arrest Martin Majin-Leon, an immigrant from Mexico, at his barbershop. After the arrest, the agents had headed to the Home Depot parking lot to debrief.
Their arrival prompted people who had been waiting in the lot, hoping to get work as day laborers, to walk or run away. Agents stopped Domingo-Ros, Juarez and Garcia and learned they were citizens of Guatemala in the U.S. illegally, according to Judge Sabraw’s order.
According the USC Immigration Clinic, the agents had illegally detained the three men and thus any information agents learned about the men’s immigration status is inadmissible. The men had been detained while in the interior of the U.S., rather than a border region, and are thus subject to due process under the Constitution, according to the clinic.
During his second term in office, President Donald Trump has conducted an unprecedented immigration enforcement campaign. The White House has said it intends to deport 1 million people a year. According to the Trump administration, between his inauguration on Jan. 20 and April 1, more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported.
Since the three men were detained, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, and Rep. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem questioning the Department of Homeland Security’s methods in immigration enforcement raids.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated following the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to cancel expedited removal orders for three men detained April 22 in Pomona.