NEW YORK, N.Y. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a man in Massachusetts in April after he broke his car window with a hammer. On Friday, the man’s lawyer said that he had been freed.
For one month, Juan Francisco Mendez was held at Strafford County Corrections in Dover, New Hampshire. On Thursday, he was freed on a $1,500 bond. One of Mendez’s lawyers, Ryan Sullivan, said that he will also have to wear a GPS ankle monitor while the U.S. government continues to try to remove him.
The police arrested Mendez, who is 29 years old, on April 14 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as he drove to the dentist. Before they dragged him and his wife out of the car, the police said they were looking for a different man in the same neighborhood with a different name.
His lawyers said that Mendez, who is from Guatemala, was detained while he was asking for asylum, which is still something he is doing. According to Mendez’s lawyers, the process to get refuge began in October of last year.
His case was thrown out by an immigration judge on May 8 because he had no criminal record and the government held him for weeks without starting the removal process against him. Following the hearing, the U.S. government charged Mendez with being in the country without permission. On Thursday, a judge granted his bond and freed him.
“Because he was brown, they stopped him, and he couldn’t show that he had status, they detained him,” Sullivan told The Associated Press on Friday.
ICE officers used a hammer to break the car window and then grabbed Ortiz. The event was caught on video by Mendez’s wife, Marilu Domingo Ortiz.
Ortiz and her 9-year-old son have already been given refuge because they are afraid of being persecuted if they go back to Guatemala. It is possible to get asylum if a family member already has it, and Mendez was in the process of asking for this type of asylum.
The Associated Press last month talked to Ondine Galvez-Sniffin, another lawyer for Mendez’s family. She said that when she got to the scene, Mendez’s wife was crying and shaking while yelling “Help Me” in Spanish as he was led away to jail. Last month, the lawyer said that in her almost 30 years of experience working with immigrants, this was the first time she had seen “such violent drastic measures being taken.”
When I called or emailed ICE to ask for a response on Friday afternoon, they did not answer.